Jupiter

The biggest planet. All the others would fit inside it. Eleven Earths side by side would just span it, and the red storm on its face is wider than our whole planet.

Also called: the biggest planet.

🕒 When can I see it?🚀 Travel there

What it is

Largest planet, about 71% of all planetary mass combined, Great Red Spot storm.

Planet: Round, orbits a star, and has swept its orbit clear. Every kind of thing there is →

How to find Jupiter

Its position moves, so there is no fixed place on a map to point at. The Planetarium works out where it is for your own place and date.

Show me Jupiter in tonight's sky

What you will really see

With your own eyes

One of the brightest lights of the night — a calm white beacon.

Through a small telescope

A striped disc with up to four tiny moons lined up beside it.

🔭 See it drawn as it looks through a telescope

🖨️ A sheet to print for this

🖨️ Print a sheet and go and look

🖨️ Sheet to take outside →

Worth knowing about Jupiter

Jupiter is 11 Earths could line up across its face. Of every 100 parts of planet material in the solar system, Jupiter is about 71 of them; the other seven planets share the remaining 29 between them. About 5 times Earth's distance from the Sun. Sunlight takes 43 minutes to reach Jupiter — on average, because that distance changes as it goes round. Its year: as long as going from being a baby to starting middle school. Its day: ~9.9 hours — the fastest-spinning planet.

What it is made of: Gas giant, mostly hydrogen and helium, no solid surface, possibly a rocky core.; How we know: No spacecraft could ever land to check — NASA's Juno maps tiny variations in Jupiter's gravity as it swoops close by, revealing how mass is layered inside, and studies how deep its powerful magnetic field reaches.
Its weather: The Great Red Spot: a storm bigger than Earth that has raged for centuries.
Its rings: Jupiter has rings too — thin and dusty, and nobody knew until a spacecraft flew past in 1979.
The machines we sent: Juno is orbiting Jupiter right now, studying its interior and auroras.

How did anyone measure the Earth in the first place?

The numbers

Across	139 822 km
Distance from the Sun, on average	5.2 AU ~778 million km · sunlight takes 43 minutes
Once round its orbit	11.9 Earth years
One day there	9.9 hours
Temperature	-110 °C (from -145 to -108)
Made of, among other things	ammonia, methane, water

How anyone knows this

Nobody flew a tape measure out there. Every number on this page was worked out from the ground:

What it belongs to

☀️ Everything the Sun holds, in one place 📖 How the solar system fits together

Then go outside

Clear tonight? The Planetarium will show you what is worth a look. Then just go out.

🌙 Plan an evening outside 🌌 Everything else in the sky