Outer Solar System, Milky Way, 2003: The Cassini spacecraft, being in the neighborhood, has taken 27 snapshots of Jupiter, and NASA folk have assembled them into a very detailed portrait of Jupiter, shown here.
Our solar system’s largest planet is eleven times the diameter of Earth, and may be made entirely of gas so it has no solid surface. In other words, nobody walking around, looking up at the beautiful 62 moons.
Walking would be tough anyway — the gravity would crush you into a teacup — and you’d be short of breath, as the air is made up of water (damp for breathing), ammonia (stings your eyes), and hydrogen sulfide (stink gas). It’s windy, too. Little breezes up to 300 miles per hour are common.
The detailed patterns are actually huge clouds. Near the lower middle of the picture is the Great Red Spot. It’s a swirling vortex of gas, large enough to swallow our entire planet of Earth.
The Cassini space probe also recently recorded the sound of a solar flare. More information about Cassini’s mission, and more photographs of Jupiter are available .
Kind of makes you stop and consider the size of things.
No? Well, that’s about the size of it.
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