Jupiter: World of a Mighty Gas Giant Quiz

Answer: Helium

Jupiter is home to the largest ocean in the Solar System - this is an ocean of liquid hydrogen.

Like the Sun, Jupiter's composition is a mixture of hydrogen and helium. Helium accounts for around a tenth of Jupiter's volume, as well as contributing to a quarter of its mass. Metallic droplets of helium fall as rain on Jupiter. Because the planet is so huge, the pressure gets more extreme the deeper you go into the planet. As the pressure increases, the the hydrogen and helium atoms are squeezed to the point where they behave curiously. Under the liquid ocean of hydrogen on Jupiter the atoms lock together, acting like solid metal. Metallic hydrogen does not occur anywhere naturally on Earth.

Saturn is also composed of 75% hydrogen and 25% helium.

Answer: 270 - 425 (434 - 683 km)

The Great Red spot is a storm that has been raging on Jupiter for hundred of years. It is located about 22 degrees south of Jupiter's equator. Records of this phenomena as far back as 1665-1713, are concluded to be descriptions of the same storm. This means that the storm has been raging for over 350 years, if this assertion is correct. The storm has been consistently monitored from Earth since 1878.

The Great Red Spot spins anticlockwise, and takes around six Earth days to completely rotate.

Answer: 1995

The Galileo space probe was the first space craft to fully orbit Jupiter.

Spacecraft usually find their correct alignment from spinning around a stationary axis, or maintain the correct alignment via coordinates to a star, or the Sun. The Galileo space probe could do both of these things.

Galileo was nuclear powered. At the time both solar power and chemical battery power would have been very impractical - to build Galileo via solar power would have required 700 square feet of solar panels. The space craft was instead powered by the radioactive decay of plutonium-238, a radioactive isotope of plutonium. The heat of this decay propelled the spacecraft via its conversion into electricity.

Answer: Europa

Europa is the sixth-largest known moon in the Solar System and the sixth-closest moon to Jupiter, out of all the known 79 moons. Europa has a thin atmosphere, consisting predominantly of oxygen, and has a water-ice crust. It is mainly composed of silicate rock, and is a little smaller than Earth's moon.

Although Jupiter has 79 known moons there are four Galilean moons. These are its major moons.

Europa possess the smoothest surface of any known moon in the Solar System. Scientists have theorized that an ocean is beneath the surface of Europa, which contributes to the smoothness of the surface. This also makes Europa a candidate for potential extra-terrestrial life. As of 2020, no spacecraft has yet landed on Europa.

Europa is named after one of Zeus' lovers in Greek mythology.

Answer: False

Provided an object has enough mass or matter, the internal temperature or pressure of any object will reach the point of thermonuclear reactions. In order to turn Jupiter into a star, it would need to have around 1,000 times its current mass.

Answer: Callisto

Callisto is the third-largest known moon of our Solar System, and the second-largest moon of Jupiter. Callisto has a thin atmosphere made of carbon dioxide, making it prone to impact craters on its surface. Callisto is the outermost of the four Galilean moons of Jupiter.

Because of its low radiation levels, Callisto has been suggested as a suitable human base during future possible explorations of Jupiter and its nearby satellites. The rotation of Callisto is gravitationally locked to its orbit of Jupiter, so it always has the same hemisphere facing inwards.

Callisto is named after one of Zeus' lovers in Greek mythology.

Answer: Pandia

Scott S. Sheppard, an American astonomer, discovered Pandia in 2017. Pandia is named after one of the Greek god Zeus' children, whom he had with Selene. Pandia was the goddess of the full moon.

Isonoe was also discovered by Scott S. Sheppard and his team, but it was discovered in 2000. He has also discovered several other moons of Jupiter throughout the years.

Answer: Adrastea

Adrastea was discovered in 1979 via photographs from the Voyager 2 spacecraft. It orbits around the edge of Jupiter's main ring, and is thought to be responsible for the formation of the rings themselves. The moon is named for Adrastea, Zeus' step-mother in Greek mythology.

Adrastea is one of the rare moons of our Solar System that orbits a planet for less time than the planet's day.

Metis is the fastest moving of Jupiter's moons.

Answer: 484 million (7,7892,2496 km)

This is equivalent to 5.2 Astronomical Units away. By comparison Earth is one AU from the Sun.

Sunlight takes around 43 minutes to reach Jupiter.

Answer: False

Despite its size, Jupiter actually has the shortest day of any planet in the Solar System. This is due to Jupiter being the fastest spinning planet in the Solar System. A day on Jupiter is 9 hours and 55 minutes in Earth's time. However, a year on Jupiter takes 11.8 Earth years.

Due to its rapid rotation, Jupiter's poles are flat and the planet has an oblate shape, with a bulging equator. This means Jupiter also has the strongest magnetic field out of the planets in the Solar System. It is estimated by NASA to be 14 times stronger than Earth's magnetic field.