Jupiter+-+SK

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 * [[image:http://galenet.galegroup.com/images/itkids/pct/00207764.jpg width="342" height="270" caption=""Colors of Jupiter" (Photodisc/Royalty Free.) Reproduced in Kids InfoBits. Detroit: Gale, 2012. http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/KidsInfoBits"]] || [[image:http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/images/Jupiter.jpg width="387" height="248" caption="A true-color image of Jupiter taken by the Cassini spacecraft. The Galilean moon Europa casts a shadow on the planet's cloud tops." link="http://solarsystem.nasa.gov//multimedia/display.cfm?IM_ID=9523"]] ||  ||

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"Jupiter."//Kids InfoBits Presents: Asronomy.// Gale, 2008. Reproduced in Kids InfoBits. Detroit: Gale, 2012. [] "Jupiter." //Astromony & Space:From the Big Bang to the Big Crunch.// Gale,2010. //Gale Science in Context.//Web.6 Mar.2012 Document URL []
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"Jupiter." //Space Sciences//. Ed. Pat Dasch. New York: Macmillan Reference USA, 2010. //Gale Science In Context//. Web. 9 Mar. 2012. Document URL []

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Jupiter's most famous feature is the Great Red Spot, and enourmous highpressure storm, like a hurricane. Jupiter has 63 moons. two of them are nearky as large as earth's moon, and two others are as large as the planet Mercury. The four larger ones were amoung the first objects italian astronomer Galileo saw with his telescope in 1609. For this reason, they are called the Galilean moons. The Great Red Spot is an enourmous high-pressure storm systm, like a hurricane. Three earths could fit inside the storm and has been visible for over 400 years. //Pioneer 10,Pioneer 11, Voyager 1, and Voyager 2// have flown past jupiter and provided details about the planet. Great Red Spot is a swirling, windy storn over 8'500 miles wide and 16,000 miles long. the spot may get its red color form sulfur or phosphouros, but no one knows for sure. beneath it lie three white oval areas. Each is a storm about the size of mars. Moons are volcanic. Jupiter's moon, Europa, may contain ice so it may contain life.

Io
Io is the most volcanically active body in the solar system. It is the only place outside Earth where eruptions of hot magma have been observed. Other planets and moons in the solar system have been volcanically active in the distant past. Io is about the same size as Earth's Moon and, had it not been for its peculiar orbit, it too would have cooled down and volcanism would have ceased. Tidal stresses are produced within Io because of the gravitational pull of Jupiter, Europa, and Ganymede. These stresses cause the interior of Io to heat up, leading to active volcanism. About four hundred active volcanoes have been observed so far on Io, many of which were discovered from their thermal signature in infrared observations made by the Galileo spacecraft. Some of the active volcanoes have plumes that can reach 300 kilometers (186 miles) high. Io's surface is very young because of many continuous volcanic eruptions, and no impact craters have been seen. About one hundred mountains have also been found on Jupiter's surface. The colors of the surface--vivid reds, yellows, greens, and black--are different from those seen on other solid bodies in the solar system. These colors are a result of sulfur and silicates on the surface. Io's lavas are hotter than those seen on Earth today, reaching temperatures of 1,500°C (2,700°F). They may be similar in composition to ultramafic lavas on Earth, which erupted millions of years ago. The exploration of Io was added to when the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) New Horizons spacecraft traveled past the moon in 2007, while on its way to the dwarf planet Pluto

Europa
Europa is particularly intriguing because of the possibility that it might harbor life. Observations by the Galileo spacecraft showed that Europa's cracked surface resembles the ice floes seen in Earth's polar regions. High-resolution images show that some of the broken pieces of the ice crust have shifted away from one another, but that they fit together like a jigsaw puzzle. This suggests that the crust has been, or still is, lubricated from underneath by warm ice or liquid water. The two most basic ingredients for life are water and heat. Like Io, Europa is subject to tidal stresses because of Jupiter and Ganymede's gravitational pull. While Europa has no evidence of current active silicate volcanism, the tidal stresses may cause heating of the interior, providing the other key ingredient for life. Europa's surface does show evidence of ice volcanism. There are places where material appears to have come up from underneath as slushy ice and flowed on the surface. Europa has very few impact craters, indicating that its surface is young. Slushy ice flowing over the surface probably erased many impact craters. Europa's surface composition is dominated by water, but Galileo detected other compounds, including hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) on the surface and a thin oxygen atmosphere. The behavior of Jupiter's magnetic field around Europa implies that there may be ions circulating globally beneath the icy surface. In the atmosphere, the Hubble Space Telescope has found over the years that Europa has a thin atmosphere consisting of mostly molecular oxygen. The Europa Jupiter System Mission (EJSM), a joint mission of NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA), has been proposed to launch around 2020 because of the likelihood that microbial life could possibly be present on the moon.

Ganymede
Larger than the planet Mercury and dwarf planet Pluto, Ganymede was the first moon known to have a magnetic field, one of the earliest discoveries made by the Galileo mission. The field is stronger than that of Mercury. Ganymede has a core made up of metallic iron or iron sulfides. If the core is molten and moving, it would produce the strong magnetic field observed by Galileo. In fact, the magnetosphere (a magnetized area surrounding an astronomical object) possessed by Ganymede, though very weak, is the only one known to exist in a natural satellite within the solar system. In was discovered and repeatedly observed by the Hubble Space Telescope from 1995 to 2000. Ganymede's surface shows a complex geologic history. The surface is characterized by large dark areas and by bright grooved terrains. The grooves are thought to have formed when the crust separated along lines of weakness. Other images showed hillcrests and crater rims capped by ice, and old terrain cut by furrows and marked by impact craters. Observations in the ultraviolet made from the Hubble Space Telescope showed the presence of oxygen on Ganymede, and Galileo observations detected hydrogen escaping from Ganymede into space. These results indicate that Ganymede has a thin oxygen atmosphere, much like Europa. Astronomers believe that the atmosphere is produced when charged particles trapped in Jupiter's magnetic field come down to Ganymede's surface. The charged particles penetrate the icy surface, disrupting the water ice. The hydrogen escapes into space, whereas the heavier oxygen atoms are left behind.

Callisto
About the same size as the planet Mercury, Callisto is Jupiter's second largest moon. Its surface is heavily cratered, one of the most cratered surfaces in the solar system, implying that it is extremely old, probably dating from about four billion years ago, which is close to the time when the solar system formed. Callisto's surface is icy and has some large impact craters and basins surrounded by concentric rings. The largest impact basin is called Valhalla, and it has a bright central region 600 kilometers (372 miles) in diameter, with rings extending to 3,000 kilometers (1,860 miles) in diameter. Galileo observations showed that Callisto has a magnetic field. Underneath its icy crust, Callisto may have a liquid ocean, which, if it is as salty as Earth's oceans, could carry enough electrical currents to produce the magnetic field. A major discovery made by the Galileo mission, through its Near Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (NIMS), is that Callisto has a thin atmosphere of carbon dioxide. Although yet to be directly observed, molecular oxygen is also suspected to be a primary part of its atmosphere. Condensed oxygen has been found to be a part of the Callisto surface, as from observations made by the Hubble Space Telescope. The NASA/ESA New Horizons spacecraft also traveled past Callisto in 2007, at which time it added to the scientific knowledge of the moon. NASA is currently considering Callisto as a likely moon to set a base for further exploration of the Jupiter system. In fact, in 2003, NASA stated that a manned mission to Callisto, called Human Outer Planet Exploration (HOPE) mission, was possible in the 2040s decade

Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system and is easily visible in the night sky. Jupiter's mass (1.9 x 1027kilograms) is nearly two and a half times the mass of the rest of the solar system's planets combined. Jupiter's volume, filled mostly with gas, is 1,316 times that of Earth. The fifth planet from the Sun, Jupiter's year is 11.86 Earth years but its day is short, only nine hours and fifty-five minutes. Jupiter resembles a small star: its composition, like the Sun's, is mostly hydrogen and helium. It emits about twice the energy that it receives from the Sun and puts out over one hundred times more heat than Earth. If Jupiter had been about fifty to one hundred times larger, it might have evolved into a star rather than a planet.

Jupiter has 50 official moons and 12 provisional (unofficial) moons. The four largest and most well-known were discovered by Galileo in the year 1610. Their names are Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto. Some of the other moons are Adrastea, Ananke, Carme, Elara, Himalia, Leda, Lysithea, Metis, Pasiphae, Sinope, and Thebe.