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Jupiter is the fifth Planet from the Sun and by far the Largest within the Solar System . Jupiter and the other Gas Giant s— Saturn , Uranus , and Neptune —are sometimes referred to as " Jovian Planet s." OVERVIEW Jupiter is usually the fourth brightest object in the sky (after the Sun , the Moon and Venus ); however at times Mars appears brighter than Jupiter. Jupiter is 2.5 times more massive than all the other planets combined, so massive that its s belong to Jupiter's family (a result due to both Jupiter's mass and its relative speed), the Kirkwood Gaps in the Asteroid Belt are mostly due to Jupiter, and Jupiter is even thought to have been possibly responsible for the Late Heavy Bombardment of the inner solar system's history. Some have described the solar system as consisting of the Sun, Jupiter, and assorted debris.1 Some describe Jupiter as the solar system's vacuum cleaner, due to its immense Gravity Well . As impressive as Jupiter's mass is, Extrasolar Planet s have been discovered with much greater masses. There is no clear-cut definition of what distinguishes a large planet such as Jupiter from a Brown Dwarf star, although the latter possesses rather specific spectral lines. Currently, if a supermassive object is above 12 Jupiter masses, large enough to burn Deuterium , it is considered a brown dwarf star; below that mass, it is a planet. Jupiter is thought to have about as large a diameter as a planet of its composition can; adding extra mass would result in further gravitational compression, in theory leading to stellar ignition. This has led some astronomers to term it a "failed star", although Jupiter would need to be about seventy times as large to become a star. |
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