Jupiter (astronomy)

Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest in the Solar System. It is a gas giant with a mass more than two and a half times that of all the other planets in the Solar System combined, but slightly less than one-thousandth the mass of the Sun. Jupiter is the third brightest natural object in the Earth's night sky after the Moon and Venus, and it has been observed since prehistoric times. It was named after the Roman god Jupiter, the king of the gods.

Jupiter is primarily composed of hydrogen, but helium constitutes one-quarter of its mass and one-tenth of its volume. It probably has a rocky core of heavier elements, but, like the other giant planets in the Solar System, it lacks a well-defined solid surface. The ongoing contraction of Jupiter's interior generates more heat than it receives from the Sun. Because of its rapid rotation, the planet's shape is an oblate spheroid: it has a slight but noticeable bulge around the equator. The outer atmosphere is divided into a series of latitudinal bands, with turbulence and storms along their interacting boundaries. A prominent result of this is the Great Red Spot, a giant storm which has been observed since at least 1831.

Jupiter is surrounded by a faint planetary ring system and a powerful magnetosphere. Jupiter's magnetic tail is nearly long, covering nearly the entire distance to Saturn's orbit. Jupiter has 82 known moons and likely many more, including the four large moons discovered by Galileo Galilei in 1610: Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto. Io and Europa are about the size of Earth's Moon; Callisto is almost the size of the planet Mercury, and Ganymede is larger.

''Pioneer 10'' was the first spacecraft to visit Jupiter, making its closest approach to the planet in December 1973. Jupiter has since been explored by multiple robotic spacecraft, beginning with the '' Pioneer'' and '' Voyager'' flyby missions from 1973 to 1979, and later with the ''Galileo'' orbiter in 1995. In 2007, the ''New Horizons'' visited Jupiter using its gravity to increase its speed, bending its trajectory en route to Pluto. The latest probe to visit the planet, ''Juno'', entered orbit around Jupiter in July 2016. Future targets for exploration in the Jupiter system include the probable ice-covered liquid ocean of Europa.

Name and symbol

In both the ancient Greek and Roman civilizations, Jupiter was named after the chief god of the divine pantheon: Zeus for the Greeks and Jupiter for the Romans. The International Astronomical Union (IAU) formally adopted the name Jupiter for the planet in 1976. The IAU names newly discovered satellites of Jupiter for the mythological lovers, favourites, and descendants of the god. The planetary symbol for Jupiter, , descends from a Greek zeta with a horizontal stroke, , as an abbreviation for ''Zeus''.

Jove, the archaic name of Jupiter, came into use as a poetic name for the planet around the 14th century. The Romans named the fifth day of the week ''diēs Iovis'' ("Jove's Day") after the planet Jupiter. In Germanic mythology, Jupiter is equated to Thor, whence the English name ''Thursday'' for the Roman ''dies Jovis''.

The original Greek deity ''Zeus'' supplies the root ''zeno-'', which is used to form some Jupiter-related words, such as '' zenographic''. ''Jovian'' is the adjectival form of Jupiter. The older adjectival form ''jovial'', employed by astrologers in the Middle Ages, has come to mean "happy" or "merry", moods ascribed to Jupiter's influence in astrology.

Formation and migration

Jupiter is believed to be the oldest planet in the Solar System. Current models of Solar System formation suggest that Jupiter formed at or beyond the