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Jupiter is the fifth planet from our Sun and is, by far, the largest planet in the solar system – more than twice as massive as all the other planets combined. Jupiter's stripes and swirls are actually cold, windy clouds of ammonia and water, floating in an atmosphere of hydrogen and helium.
Jupiter is a gas giant and so lacks an Earth-like surface. If it has a solid inner core at all, it’s likely only about the size of Earth.
Everyone knows that Earth, Mars and Jupiter are planets. But both Pluto and Ceres were once considered planets until new discoveries triggered scientific debate about how to best describe them—a vigorous debate that continues to this day.
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Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun, and the largest in the solar system – more than twice as massive as the other planets combined.
Our solar system consists of our star, the Sun, and everything bound to it by gravity – the planets Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune; dwarf planets such as Pluto; dozens of moons; and millions of asteroids, comets, and meteoroids.
Jupiter's menagerie of moons includes the largest in the solar system (Ganymede), an ocean moon (Europa) and a volcanic moon (Io). Many of Jupiter's outer moons have highly elliptical orbits and orbit backwards (opposite to the spin of the planet).
The Kuiper Belt is one of the largest structures in our solar system – others being the Oort Cloud, the heliosphere, and the magnetosphere of Jupiter. Its overall shape is like a puffed-up disk or donut.
Europa orbits Jupiter every 3.5 days and is locked by gravity to Jupiter, so the same hemisphere of the moon always faces the planet. Jupiter takes about 4,333 Earth days (or about 12 Earth years) to orbit the Sun (a Jovian year).
NASA’s real-time science encyclopedia of deep space exploration. Our scientists and far-ranging robots explore the wild frontiers of our solar system.