See that Star! By Jove!

A few days back on the 17^th July if you happened to be out in the evening you may have noticed a full moon. Nearby you should have been able to see a fairly bright star.

This star is in fact the 4^th brightest object in the night sky. It’s the planet Jupiter, the 5^th ball from the sun. Have you ever wondered that if you look through a pair of binoculars at Jupiter you might be able see the Giant Red Spot? …..

Well you can’t. But it is the largest planet in our solar system and is more than 2.5 times massive than the rest of the solar system planets combined. It has a volume of more than 1,300 times of our planet earth. Scientists have worked out that theoretically it is impossible for the planet to be any larger even if it had more matter because if it did have more matter the gravitational forces would be so huge it would cause the planet to shrink.

Back to that Giant Red Spot… it is the location of a truly massive and powerful storm that has been blowing for at least 180 years. It’s not known exactly when it was formed but scientist consider it to be stable and that it will probably go on blowing for hundreds of years to come. The spot is 2 to 3 times larger in diameter than the earth. If you think storms on earth are bad enough then you should feel sorry for Jovians, especially those who live approximately 22 degrees south of their equator. They have to brace down for that giant storm about every 6 earth days as that is the time it takes for the storm to circumnavigate the planet. They also have to tolerate a whole host of others in between time.

The planet is known to have as many as 63 moons. The first four were discovered by Galileo in 1610. In 1893 a fifth moon was discovered and by 1975 a total of 13 were known. A further 3 were discovered by Voyager 1 in 1979. A 17^th moon was briefly discovered and then lost again in 1975 – how did they manage to lose it? Fortunately, it was found again in 1999 and another 46 tiny moons were discovered through to February 9^th 2003. No more have been identified since. These little moons vary in diameter from 3km to around 9km and are thought to be captured asteroids – When will Jove release them; the poor creatures!

In Europe and the Middle East, over the next few weeks, if you look into the evening sky in a South East direction and you’re lucky enough to have no cloud cover you will the bright star and by Jove you will know a little something about it!