Jupiter - King of the Planets Trivia Quiz

Answer: 2.5 times bigger

Jupiter's mass is about 1.9 x 10^27 kilograms, or about 318 times the mass of Earth. The second-largest planet in the solar system is Saturn, and it's about 95 times the mass of Earth. Combined, all of the other planets don't come close to Jupiter's mass; it's about 2.5 times more massive than all of the other planets combined, even if you do throw Pluto into the calculation.

Answer: Ammonia

The clouds covering Jupiter are actually formed by ammonia crystals and they swirl around to create the beautiful patterns seen by the different probes that have flown to or flown by Jupiter. They are only, believe it or not, about 50km thick, and the different colours that we can see are different elements being brought up and mixing with the ammonia and reacting to sunlight.

After the clouds, it's mostly hydrogen and helium all the way down.

Answer: Galileo Galilei

Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto are the four largest Jovian moons. They were first verifiably observed by Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei, and are often referred to as the Galilean moons. Of the four, Ganymede is the largest in terms of radius, bigger even than the planet Mercury. Io has volcanic activity on it and Europa has an ocean of water beneath the surface ice cover, perhaps potential for life to exist?

Answer: Io

Io is Jupiter's third-largest moon and one that is the most active object in the entire Solar System, geologically. It is a very dense moon and has the highest surface gravity of any moon in the solar system even though it is roughly about the size of Earth's Moon. Io is under intense gravitational stresses from the planet as well as the other moons, the key factor that contributes to its intense volcanic activity.

Answer: Magnetic field

Jupiter does not really have a surface, however, at its core, the hydrogen is under such intense pressure that the electrons are free to move and the hydrogen itself acts like a metal. Combined with the very rapid spin of the planet, the fastest angular velocity in the solar system, these two things create a very strong and powerful magnetic field.

The field is so disruptive that it can ruin space probes that go through it. All four of Jupiter's major moons orbit within the magnetosphere, something that makes observing them from up close difficult but protects them from solar wind.

Answer: Red

Though there may have been other observances of the Great Red Spot before Cassini's sighting in 1665, that is the one that is generally accepted as being the first. In 1879 it became one of Jupiter's most studied features. It is an anticyclonic storm that is located about 22 degrees south of Jupiter's equator.

It varies in size and there is a fear that one day it will just cease to exist. However, seeing as how it's been around for more than 3.5 centuries, it is safe to say that it's one storm you wouldn't want to have been caught out in without an umbrella.

Answer: No, it doesn't have enough mass

Unlike what happens in Arthur C. Clarke's "2010: Odyssey Two", Jupiter can never be a star, even a small one. It lacks the sufficient mass, meaning it lacks sufficient gravity, to start and maintain nuclear fusion at its core. Despite its composition (which is nearly identical to that of the sun, approximately 90% hydrogen and 10% helium), fusion is not sustainable on the planet. This led to some astronomers calling Jupiter a 'failed star'.

Interesting to note that Jupiter emits more energy than it receives from the sun. However, this is due to its strong magnetic field which will accelerate charged particles causing them to emit photons.

Answer: 10 hours

Of all of the planets, Jupiter spins the fastest. In fact, the spin is so fast that it flattens out the poles and makes the equator of the planet bulge out. the difference between the equatorial diameter and the polar diameter is over 9000 kilometers! The day is just under ten hours long, however, the distance that Jupiter is from the Sun is so large that the closest star is five times smaller than the sun you see on Earth.

It does not light up the planet that much during the short day.

Answer: Cyclonic

At both of the poles of Jupiter, cyclonic storms abound. In fact, the pole itself has a large central cyclone while other smaller cyclones revolve around the central one and die off and reform as the planet rotates. The cyclones observed in the South Pole of Jupiter seem to be much larger, however, than the ones in the north, though both regions are quite turbulent.

Answer: Jupiter's moons

Jupiter's ring system was the third to be discovered in the solar system, after Saturn and Uranus. While those two planets' rings could be observed from Earth, it was not until the 1979 flyby of Jupiter by Voyager 1 that the Jovian rings were first seen.

These rings are very thin, though one of them is relatively bright, and they were created from ejecta from the moons of Jupiter and caught by Jupiter's gravity. Due to Jupiter's fast spin, the intraplanetary material is spun around quickly which is why the rings have flattened out so much.