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The term gas giant was coined in 1952 by the science fiction writer James Blish [6] and was originally used to refer to all giant planets.It is, arguably, something of a misnomer because throughout most of the volume of all giant planets, the pressure is so high that matter is not in gaseous form. [7]
Giant planets are sometimes known as gas giants, but many astronomers now apply the term only to Jupiter and Saturn, classifying Uranus and Neptune, which have different compositions, as ice giants. Both names are potentially misleading; the Solar System's giant planets all consist primarily of fluids above their critical points, where distinct gas
For the very hottest gas giants, with temperatures above 1400 K (2100 °F, 1100 °C) or cooler planets with lower gravity than Jupiter, the silicate and iron cloud decks are predicted to lie high up in the atmosphere. The predicted Bond albedo of a class V planet around a Sun-like star is 0.55, due to reflection by the cloud decks.
Astronomers have identified a planet that’s bigger than Jupiter yet surprisingly as fluffy and light as cotton candy. The gas giants in our solar system — Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune ...
Planets whose orbits lie within the orbit of Earth. [nb 1] Inner planet: A planet in the Solar System that have orbits smaller than the asteroid belt. [nb 2] Outer planet: A planet in the Solar System beyond the asteroid belt, and hence refers to the gas giants. Pulsar planet: A planet that orbits a pulsar or a rapidly rotating neutron star ...
The prevailing theory is that such planets were formed when larger bodies. Saturn and Jupiter may be gas giants now, but according to some experts, they were once nothing more than tiny pebbles ...
According to the IAU's explicit count, there are eight planets in the Solar System; four terrestrial planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars) and four giant planets, which can be divided further into two gas giants (Jupiter and Saturn) and two ice giants (Uranus and Neptune). When excluding the Sun, the four giant planets account for more than ...
It is a gas giant with a mass more than 2.5 times that of all the other planets in the Solar System combined and slightly less than one-thousandth the mass of the Sun. Its diameter is eleven times that of Earth , and a tenth that of the Sun. Jupiter orbits the Sun at a distance of 5.20 AU (778.5 Gm ), with an orbital period of 11.86 years .