Jupiter

Jupiter is the giant among the planets. All the others could fit into it with room to spare, and it could swallow more than 1300 bodies the size of Earth. Jupiter is a gassy planet, made up mainly of hydrogen. Its stormy atmosphere is full of clouds. Jupiter travels through space with a large family of moons, some as big as planets.

Jupiter is a great ball of gas and liquid gas. Its atmosphere is more than 1000 kilometres deep and is made up mainly of hydrogen gas, with some helium. It is full of clouds of ice, ammonia and amonium compounds. At the buttom of the atmosphere the great pressure turns the hydrogen into a liquid. Deeper down, rapidly increasing pressure turns the hydrogen into a kind of liquid metal. Right at the centre, there is a small core of rock.

The most prominent feature on Jupiter's surface is large red ocal region called the Great Red Spot. Astronomers did not know what it was until space probes looked at it closely. We now know it is a gigantic swirling storm, rather like a huge hurricane on Earth. It measures about 40000 kilometres across three times the size of Earth.