Paragraph on “Jupiter the Largest Planet” complete paragraph for Class 9, Class 10, Class 11 and Class 12

Jupiter the Largest Planet

Jupiter is largely made of liquids, gases and swirling clouds of hydrogen and helium. These liquids and gases become denser and denser as we move towards the planet’s centre. Jupiter is the largest planet in the Solar system with a diameter of 1,42,884 kilometres, which is 318 times that of Earth. Besides this it is also the fastest spinning planet, it takes only 9 hours and 50 minutes to complete one rotation. Different parts of its surface rotate at different times, as an example the large red spot on Jupiter’s surface takes an extra five to seven minutes to rotate. Similarly the oval white cloud on its surface has a different speed of  its own. The central or equatorial region of Jupiter bulges outward by about 5000 kilometres as a result of the centrifugal force.

It is a cold planet with temperatures as low as —150° centigrade. In orbit at 778 million kilometres from the Sun, Jupiter, at a speed of 13.1 kilometres per second, takes 11.85 years to revolve on its path around the Sun. Jupiter is more like a miniature solar system on its own since it has 16 moons some of which are very large in size and amongst these the smallest moon is only about 15 kilometres or less in diameter. The moons were discovered by Galileo Galilei and he had then called the four bright moons he saw as the `Medicean stars’. The surface gravity on this planet is 2.64 times that of Earth. The first spacecraft to fly past Jupiter in 1973 was the Pioneer X, followed by the Pioneer XI in the year 1979 and subsequently the Voyager I and Voyager II. Jupiter has shown a pattern of changing its colours over time, two belts on Jupiter’s surface change colour from red to brown to grey and then at times to blue, this effect occurs once in 12 years. From the 17th of July 1994 onwards Jupiter was bombarded by 19 pieces of the comet Shoemaker Levy which was on a collision course with this planet. Each of collision generated heat in excess of 30,000° centigrade and an explosion in excess of 13,000 billion megatonnes of  T.N.T. and left scars on the surface of Jupiter.