What makes jupiter different from other planets

From our point of view on Earth , it appears to move slowly in the sky, taking months to move from one constellation to another. Jupiter has unique cloud features. The upper atmosphere of Jupiter is divided into cloud belts and zones.

They are made primarily of ammonia crystals, sulfur, and mixtures of the two compounds. The Great Red Spot is a huge storm on Jupiter. It has raged for at least years. It is so large that three Earths could fit inside it.

Ganymeade measures 5, km across, making it larger than the planet Mercury. Jupiter has a thin ring system. They are between 2, to 12, kilometres thick. It orbits the Sun quickly, once every 88 days. It rotates slowly, however, only once every 59 days. The surface of Mercury is gray to orange in color, and is covered with craters.

Mercury is named for a mythical god who ran very fast. It is about the same size as the Earth, a little over 12, kilometers miles in diameter. Venus has a very thick atmosphere, composed largely of sulphuric acid and CO 2. We could not breathe on Venus, because the atmosphere would be very toxic to humans. This atmosphere gives Venus a brownish-yellow color. It also traps heat the greenhouse effect making the surface of Venus the hottest in the Solar System, about o K.

Venus rotates very slowly, taking days to complete one turn. It is named for the Roman goddess of love. Earth is a little more than 12, kilometers in diameter. It differs from the other planets because it has liquid water on its surface, maintains life, and has active plate movement. It rotates on its axis every 24 hours a day and revolves around the Sun every days a year. The Earth has one moon.

Mars is a little more than half the size of the Earth, having a diameter of 6, kilometers. It takes Mars days to revolve once around the Sun. It rotates at about the same speed as the Earth, taking Mars has a very thin atmosphere which is composed largely of CO 2. The next full Moon is the Beaver Moon, and there will be a near-total lunar eclipse.

Full Moon Guide: November - December Mocha Swirls in Jupiter's Turbulent Atmosphere. This page showcases our resources for those interested in learning more about Jupiter. Jupiter Resources. JPL's lucky peanuts are an unofficial tradition at big mission events. Full Moon Guide: October - November A new paper details how the hydrological cycle of the now-dry lake at Jezero Crater is more complicated than originally thought. Winds in the outermost "lane" of Jupiter's Great Red Spot are accelerating — a discovery made possible by Hubble.

This year, the minimum extent of Arctic sea ice dropped to 1. Researchers will use Webb to observe 17 actively forming planetary systems. The lander cleared enough dust from one solar panel to keep its seismometer on through the summer, allowing scientists to study three big quakes.

Scientists found evidence that an area on Mars called Arabia Terra had thousands of "super eruptions" over a million-year period. Full Moon Guide: September - October Perseverance successfully collected its first pair of rock samples, and scientists already are gaining new insights into the region. Data received late Sept.

The rover will abrade a rock this week, allowing scientists and engineers to decide whether that target would withstand its powerful drill. Drought is a complicated problem that requires lots of data. Satellites from NASA and its partners help collect that data. Drought Makes its Home on the Range. Gene Roddenberry would have been years old on Aug. Full Moon Guide: August - September The images show Venus approaching from the left while the Sun is off-camera to the upper right.

And the red planet is so dry that it has not had any rain for billions of years. The outer layers of the jovian planets are neither warm enough nor solid enough for human habitation.

Any bases we build in the systems of the giant planets may well have to be in space or one of their moons—none of which is particularly hospitable to a luxury hotel with a swimming pool and palm trees. Perhaps we will find warmer havens deep inside the clouds of Jupiter or in the ocean under the frozen ice of its moon Europa. All of this suggests that we had better take good care of Earth because it is the only site where life as we know it could survive.

Recent human activity may be reducing the habitability of our planet by adding pollutants to the atmosphere, especially the potent greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. Human civilization is changing our planet dramatically, and these changes are not necessarily for the better. In a solar system that seems unready to receive us, making Earth less hospitable to life may be a grave mistake.

The crusts of all of the terrestrial planets, as well as of the larger moons, have been modified over their histories by both internal and external forces. Externally, each has been battered by a slow rain of projectiles from space, leaving their surfaces pockmarked by impact craters of all sizes see Figure 3 in Overview of Our Planetary System.

We have good evidence that this bombardment was far greater in the early history of the solar system, but it certainly continues to this day, even if at a lower rate. The collision of more than 20 large pieces of Comet Shoemaker—Levy 9 with Jupiter in the summer of see Figure 3 is one dramatic example of this process.

Figure 3: Comet Shoemaker—Levy 9. The comet was approximately million kilometers from Earth, heading on a collision course with Jupiter. Weaver STScl , E. Smith STScl. Figure 4: Jupiter with Huge Dust Clouds. The Hubble Space Telescope took this sequence of images of Jupiter in summer , when fragments of Comet Shoemaker—Levy 9 collided with the giant planet.

Here we see the site hit by fragment G, from five minutes to five days after impact. Several of the dust clouds generated by the collisions became larger than Earth. Hammel, NASA. During the time all the planets have been subject to such impacts, internal forces on the terrestrial planets have buckled and twisted their crusts, built up mountain ranges, erupted as volcanoes, and generally reshaped the surfaces in what we call geological activity.

Among the terrestrial planets, Earth and Venus have experienced the most geological activity over their histories, although some of the moons in the outer solar system are also surprisingly active. In contrast, our own Moon is a dead world where geological activity ceased billions of years ago.