Colorful latitudinal bands, atmospheric clouds and storms illustrate Jupiter's dynamic weather systems. The cloud patterns change within hours or days. The Great Red Spot is a complex storm moving in a counter-clockwise direction. At the outer edge, material appears to rotate in four to six days; near the center, motions are small and nearly random in direction. An array of other smaller storms and eddies can be found through out the banded clouds.
Auroral emissions, similar to Earth's northern lights, were observed in the polar regions of Jupiter. The auroral emissions appear to be related to material from Io that spirals along magnetic field lines to fall into Jupiter's atmosphere. Cloud-top lightning bolts, similar to superbolts in Earth's high atmosphere, were also observed.
Jupiter Statistics | |
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Mass (kg) | 1.900e+27 |
Mass (Earth = 1) | 3.1794e+02 |
Equatorial radius (km) | 71,492 |
Equatorial radius (Earth = 1) | 1.1209e+01 |
Mean density (gm/cm^3) | 1.33 |
Mean distance from the Sun (km) | 778,330,000 |
Mean distance from the Sun (Earth = 1) | 5.2028 |
Rotational period (days) | 0.41354 |
Orbital period (days) | 4332.71 |
Mean orbital velocity (km/sec) | 13.07 |
Orbital eccentricity | 0.0483 |
Tilt of axis (degrees) | 3.13 |
Orbital inclination (degrees) | 1.308 |
Equatorial surface gravity (m/sec^2) | 22.88 |
Equatorial escape velocity (km/sec) | 59.56 |
Visual geometric albedo | 0.52 |
Magnitude (Vo) | -2.70 |
Mean cloud temperature | -121°C |
Atmospheric pressure (bars) | 0.7 |
Atmospheric composition | 90% 10% |