Jupiter
What is Jupiter?
Planets· Diameter 139,820 km. The gas giant outweighs all other planets combined ×2.5. Its Great Red Spot is larger than Earth, and its four Galilean moons form a miniature solar system.
📍 Visible from where you are right now — computed in your browser
bearing · altitude · rise time · best time tonight
Where Jupiter is in your sky right now: https://nowsky.org/solar/sky?sel=jupiter — location and time set automatically, no login.
Orbit and size
| Diameter | 139,820 km |
|---|---|
| Distance | 5.2 AU |
| Year | 11.9 yr |
| Moons | 95+ |
Figures are representative approximations. Source: compiled from NASA and IAU public data.
Moons of Jupiter
Related events
- Shoemaker–Levy 9 hits Jupiter
- The Great Conjunction of 2020
- JUICE launch — to the icy moons
- Europa Clipper reaches Jupiter(planned)
- JUICE arrives at Jupiter(planned)
Frequently asked
- How big is Jupiter?
- 139,820 km.
- How far is Jupiter from Earth?
- 5.2 AU.
- What are the main moons of Jupiter?
- Europa, Ganymede, Io, Callisto.
- Where is Jupiter in the sky right now?
- Open the sky view for your location and time and it shows the position in the sky right now.
A ten-hour day and the planet it flattened
Jupiter spins faster than any other planet: one rotation in 9 hours 56 minutes, with the equator moving at 45,000 km/h. The speed visibly flattens it — the equatorial diameter is 6.5 percent greater than the polar, and even a small telescope shows the disk as a sideways ellipse. Earth's flattening, by comparison, is 0.3 percent, twenty times less.
The fast spin also shapes the clouds. Jupiter's bright zones and dark belts are stretched into stripes along lines of latitude because rotation drags the atmospheric flow east and west, and the jet streams at the belt boundaries exceed 500 km/h. With no solid surface, the rotation period differs by minutes from one latitude to another, and the official day is the one measured from the magnetic field.
The planet in depth
Jupiter outweighs the other seven planets combined, times 2.5. Rather than a failed star (it would need 80× more mass), think of it as the solar system's architect: its gravity kept the asteroid belt from becoming a planet and still shepherds countless comets and asteroids.
The Great Red Spot is a storm wider than Earth that has raged for at least 190 years of telescopic records — though it has been shrinking for a century, and ours may be the generation that sees it die. The stripes are ammonia-cloud jet streams running past 500 km/h.
The four moons Galileo found in 1610 — Io, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto — were the first hard evidence that not everything orbits Earth. Zoom into Jupiter in the orbit view to watch all four circle in true relative periods.
Jupiter is the solar system's vacuum cleaner and editor: in 1994 comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 broke into twenty pieces that slammed in one after another — the first planetary impact humans ever witnessed, and a demonstration of how many blows Jupiter absorbs for the inner planets. In the system's youth it likely migrated, reshuffling the asteroid belt and the rocky planets' very arrangement.
Related
Figures are representative approximations. Simulated positions use J2000 mean elements.