Jupiter

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Introduction1

Astronomic (YouTube Channel)

Dictionary

Jupiter : the largest of the planets and fifth in order from the sun — Merriam-Webster   See also   OneLook

Encyclopedia

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 was named after the Roman god Jupiter, the king of the gods. It 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 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. — Wikipedia

Jupiter (Encyclopædia Britannica)

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Inspiration

Juno is a NASA space probe orbiting the planet Jupiter. It was built by Lockheed Martin and is operated by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The spacecraft was launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on 5 August 2011 UTC. Juno entered a polar orbit of Jupiter on 5 July 2016 UTC, to begin a scientific investigation of the planet. The object of the mission is to measure Jupiter’s composition, gravitational field, magnetic field, and polar magnetosphere. It will also search for clues about how the planet formed, including whether it has a rocky core, the amount of water present within the deep atmosphere, mass distribution, and its deep winds, which can reach speeds up to 620 km/h (390 mph). After completing its mission, Juno will be intentionally deorbited into Jupiter’s atmosphere. — Wikipedia

Note: This is a 360° Video — press and hold to explore it!

NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (YouTube Channel)
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (Official Website)

Juno: Mission at Jupiter (NASA Science)

This animation takes the viewer on a simulated flight into, and then out of, Jupiter’s upper atmosphere at the location of the Great Red Spot. It was created by combining an image from the JunoCam imager on NASA’s Juno spacecraft with a computer-generated animation. The perspective begins about 2,000 miles (3,000 kilometers) above the cloud tops of the planet’s southern hemisphere. The bar at far left indicates altitude during the quick descent; a second gauge next to that depicts the dramatic increase in temperature that occurs as the perspective dives deeper down. The clouds turn crimson as the perspective passes through the Great Red Spot. Finally, the view ascends out of the spot. — NASA

NASA (YouTube Channel)
NASA (Official Website)

Juno (NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, YouTube Playlist)

NASA’s Juno Mission, Scored by Vangelis (NASASolarSystem, YouTube Playlist)

Juno (Astrum, YouTube Playlist)

NASA’s Eyes is a freely available suite of computer visualization applications created by the Visualization Technology Applications and Development Team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) to render scientifically accurate views of the planets studied by JPL missions and the spacecraft used in that study. — Wikipedia

Jupiter (NASA’s Eyes on the Solar System, NASA’s JPL & Cal Tech)

Solar System Treks are online, browser-based portals that allow you to visualize, explore, and analyze the surfaces of other worlds using real data returned from a growing fleet of spacecraft. You can view the worlds through the eyes of many different instruments, pilot real-time 3D flyovers above mountains and into craters, and conduct measurements of surface features. These Solar System Treks are portals for exploration of Jupiter’s moons Ganymede and Europa with a data from NASA’s Voyager and Galileo missions.– Ganymede Trek (Solar System Treks, NASA)

Ganymede Trek (Solar System Treks, NASA)
Europa Trek (Solar System Treks, NASA)

Jupiter (Astrum, YouTube Playlist)

Articles about Jupiter (Big Think)

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Innovation

Science

ScienceAtNASA (YouTube Channel)
NASA Science (Official Website)

Jupiter Resources (Staci L. Tiedeken, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center)
Jupiter (NASA Science)

Jupiter Videos (ViewSpace, Space Telescope Science Institute)

Jupiter, The Planet with a Solar System of Its Own (Planetary Society)
Jupiter’s Family Secrets (Lunar & Planetary Institute)

Jupiter (Eric Weisstein’s World of Astronomy, Wolfram Research)
Jupiter (Wolfram Alpha)

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Preservation

History

Babylonian Astronomers Used Geometry to Track Jupiter (Philip Ball, Nature)

On 7 January 1610, Galileo observed with his telescope what he described at the time as three fixed stars, totally invisible by their smallness, all close to Jupiter, and lying on a straight line through it. Observations on subsequent nights showed that the positions of these “stars” relative to Jupiter were changing in a way that would have been inexplicable if they had really been fixed stars. On 10 January, Galileo noted that one of them had disappeared, an observation which he attributed to its being hidden behind Jupiter. Within a few days, he concluded that they were orbiting Jupiter: he had discovered three of Jupiter’s four largest moons. He discovered the fourth on 13 January. Galileo named the group of four the Medicean stars, in honour of his future patron, Cosimo II de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, and Cosimo’s three brothers. Later astronomers, however, renamed them Galilean satellites in honour of their discoverer. — Wikipedia

Science Box (YouTube Channel)

410 Years Ago: Galileo Discovers Jupiter’s Moons (John Uri, NASA Johnson Space Center)
Galileo Galilei: Jupiter’s Moons (Wikipedia)

Galileo was an American space probe that studied the planet Jupiter and its moons. Named after the Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei, it consisted of an orbiter and an entry probe. It was delivered into Earth orbit on October 18, 1989 by Space Shuttle Atlantis. Galileo arrived at Jupiter on December 7, 1995, after gravitational assist flybys of Venus and Earth, and became the first spacecraft to orbit an outer planet. Galileo was intentionally destroyed in Jupiter’s atmosphere on September 21, 2003. — Wikipedia

The Vintage Space (Amy Shira Teitel, YouTube Channel)

Galileo Mission (NASA Science)

Pioneer programs were two series of United States lunar and planetary space probes exploration. The second program, which ran from 1965 to 1992, sent four spacecraft to measure interplanetary space weather, two to explore Jupiter and Saturn, and two to explore Venus. The two outer planet probes, Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11, became the first of five artificial objects to achieve the escape velocity that will allow them to leave the Solar System. — Wikipedia

Pioneer 10 Mission (NASA Science)
Pioneer 10: Our First View into Outer Planets (SciShow Space, YouTube Video)
The Extraordinary Journey of NASA’s Pioneer 10 (The History Guy, YouTube Video)
Pioneer 10 (Wikipedia)

Pioneer 11 Mission (NASA Science)
Pioneer 11 (Wikipedia)

Pioneer 10 and 11 (Planetary Society)

Voyager Program is an American scientific program that employs two robotic interstellar probes, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2. They were launched in 1977 to take advantage of a favorable alignment of Jupiter and Saturn, to fly near them while collecting data for transmission back to Earth. — Wikipedia

NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (YouTube Channel)
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (Official Website)

NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (YouTube Channel)
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (Official Website)

NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (YouTube Channel)
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (Official Website)

Voyager 1 & 2 (NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, YouTube Playlist)
Voyager Mission (NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory)

Voyager Mission (NASA Science)
Voyager 1 (NASA Science)
Voyager 2 (NASA Science)

The Voyager Spacecraft’s 40 Year Journey (The New York Times, YouTube Video)
The Story of the Voyager Expedition (The New Yorker, YouTube Video)

Voyager 2 and the Grand Tour (The History Guy, YouTube Video)

Voyager Mission (Planetary Society)
Voyager Program (Wikipedia)

Jupiter Exploration (NASA Science)

Jupiter Flybys (Wolfram Alpha)

Library

DDC: 523.45 Jupiter (Library Thing)
Subject: Jupiter (Library Thing)

Subject: Jupiter (Open Library)

LCC: QB 661 Jupiter (Library of Congress)
Subject: Jupiter (Library of Congress)

Subject: Jupiter (WorldCat)

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Participation

Education

Jupiter – Level 1 (StarChild, Goddard Space Flight Center, NASA)
Jupiter – Level 2 (StarChild, Goddard Space Flight Center, NASA)

All About Jupiter (Space Place, NASA)
Teach with Jupiter (European Space Agency)

Jupiter (Cosmos4Kids)

Jupiter (CrashCourse Astronomy, YouTube Video)
Jupiter’s Moons (CrashCourse Astronomy, YouTube Video)

MERLOT: Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching
OER Commons: Open Educational Resources

Community

Organization

Jupiter Section (British Astronomical Association)

News

Jupiter (Nova Research Highlights, American Astronomical Society)
Jupiter (EurekaAlert, AAAS)
Jupiter (Astronomy Magazine)
Jupiter (JSTOR)
Jupiter (Science Daily)
Jupiter (Phys.org)


Recent News from Phys.org …

  • Canada proposes POET mission to hunt Earth-sized...
    on May 2, 2026 at 10:00 pm

    Exoplanet science and the search for life beyond Earth continue to advance at break-neck speeds, with the number of confirmed exoplanets by NASA rapidly approaching 6,300, with 223 of those exoplanets being designated as terrestrial (rocky) exoplanets. With the promise of discovering an increasing number of Earth-sized exoplanets increasing every day, new telescopes from across the world have the opportunity to contribute to this incredible field.

  • Two suns are better than one—planets thrive...
    on April 27, 2026 at 4:40 pm

    Planets may actually form more easily around double stars than around single stars like our sun, according to new research from astrophysicists at the University of Lancashire. Binary stars are common in our galaxy, yet for a long time astronomers believed that the gravitational tug-of-war between two stars would make it harder for circumbinary planets, worlds that orbit both stars, to form. Famous fictional worlds such as Tatooine from Star Wars, with its iconic twin sunsets, were thought to […]

  • The planet haul that changes everything
    on April 27, 2026 at 11:40 am

    Finding planets used to be a painstaking business. Astronomers would fix their gaze on a handful of carefully chosen stars, watch and wait, and hope to catch the faint dip in starlight that signals a world passing in front of its host. It worked. It worked brilliantly. But it also meant we were fishing with a very small net in a very big ocean.

  • Astronomers find an exo-Jupiter, and it seems to...
    on April 22, 2026 at 4:20 pm

    A team of astronomers led by Elisabeth Matthews at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA) has made a discovery that highlights the limits of most current models of exoplanet atmospheres: water-ice clouds on a distant Jupiter-like exoplanet called Epsilon Indi Ab.

  • Methane emerges from interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS...
    on April 16, 2026 at 11:40 pm

    Interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS is now on its way out of our solar system, never to return. The comet was only the third-ever detected object to originate from outside our solar system. Traveling at high speeds, it looped around the sun within 1.5 AU (one AU, or astronomical unit, is the distance between Earth and the sun) in October 2025; as of April, it is now past the orbit of Jupiter on its way out of the solar system.

returntotop

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Related

Here are links to pages about closely related subjects.

Knowledge Realm

Physical

“Fundamentals”
Law (Constant) Relativity
Force Gravity, Electromagnetism (Light, Color)
Matter (Microscope) Molecule, Atom (Periodic Table), Particle

“Space”
Universe (Astronomical Instrument)
Galaxy Milky Way, Andromeda
Planetary System Star, Brown Dwarf, Planet, Moon

Our Neighborhood
Solar System Sun
Terrestrial Planet Mercury, Venus, Earth (Moon), Mars
Asteroid Belt Ceres, Vesta
Jovian Planet Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune
Trans-Neptunian Object
Kuiper Belt Pluto, Haumea, Makemake
Scattered Disc Eris, Sedna, Planet X
Oort Cloud Etc. Scholz’s Star
Small Body Comet, Centaur, Asteroid

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Notes

1.   The resources on this page are are organized by a classification scheme developed exclusively for Cosma.