Questions tagged [jupiter]
Questions regarding Jupiter, the 5th and largest planet in the Solar System.
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Was there ever a Jupiter transit or Saturn transit?
I've watched the Venus transit 2004 with a small telescope, a relatively rare event, considering most people can only observe two in their life time.
If E.T. were sitting in a sunny place on a moon ...
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Has the conjunction between Venus, Jupiter, and Regulus only occurred twice in 2,000 years?
I recently heard the claim that mid-July, the "Star of Bethlehem" formed for the first time in 2,000 years, where the Star of Bethlehem is a three-way conjunction between Venus, Jupiter, and Regulus. ...
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How to calculate conjunctions of 2 planets
So, the recent conjunction of Jupiter and Venus seems to have spawned lots of excitement over this "rare" event. But what I can't figure out, is exactly how rare it is. And I've seen such conflicting ...
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How does the Grand Tack Hypothesis explain how Jupiter formed inside the frost line?
The Grand Tack Hypothesis states that Jupiter formed at roughly 3.5 AU from the Sun, then interacted with a large portion of objects in the Solar System before settling into its current orbit.
Yet as ...
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How did Jupiter form where it is?
Since Jupiter is the biggest planet in our solar system and is made up of mostly hydrogen and helium, (the gases the Sun uses to create energy), how come it didn't form as far out as say Uranus or ...
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Asteroids in langrangian Points 4 & 5
There are Asteroids "trapped" in Jupiters Langrange points 4 and 5 called trojans and greeks. Are there any asteroids in the earths L4 and L5? Have we seen asteroids in Lagrange points of the earth ...
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Determine the moons of Jupiter through a telescope
I was doing my own "space exploration" last night with a telescope. Being a space noob I can't visually determine stars or planets (I know the moon, though), but I focused on one particularly bright ...
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What kind of telescope do I need to see most of the Jupiter's moons?
I have a simple Newtonian reflector telescope. Using it, I am able to see the Galilean moons of Jupiter. However, Jupiter has much more moons than that (Wikipedia says 67 have been discovered this far)...
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How much light does Jupiter project onto the surface of Ganymede?
I suppose the answer would be a range as the Jupiter-facing side of Ganymede passed from Jupiter's light side to its shadow side. I'd also like to know how much light the sun projects onto the surface ...
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How dense would planet earth have to be to have the same gravity as Jupiter?
I was reading this question about how small could a planet be while having earth-like gravitational pull.
This got me thinking, how dense would planet Earth have ...
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How to view Jupiter with 4.5" Newtonian Reflector
I have a 4.5" Newtonian Reflector and I took a look at Jupiter the other night.
I was able to get a reasonably sharp view of it and see a number of it's moons, but I was unable to see any surface ...
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How do moons get captured?
A moon-sized object is running loose in the Solar System, perhaps after a planetary collision. As it approaches a planet, it's presumably following an approximately hyperbolic path. If it goes on ...
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Why are gas giants colored the way they are?
As I understand it, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune are all made primarily from varying proportions of hydrogen and helium. Despite this, Jupiter is very red, Saturn is yellow, and Uranus and ...
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What will happen when landing on Jupiter?
Jupiter is a gas giant, so landing on it will not be like landing on Earth, our Moon or Mars etc., as it does not have a solid surface like these.
If we have a hypothetical spaceship or probe landing ...
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Are a black hole's jets caused by the black hole's magnetic field?
Do the jets sometimes emitted by a black hole result from its magnetic field? It would seem Jupiter's magnetic field tends to be concentrated at the poles, and I would imagine this might extend to ...
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Is there a strong galactic magnetic field?
My main question is: Is there a strong galactic magnetic field, perhaps driven by the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy? I am also wondering if this field would be strong enough to ...
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Can magnetism escape a black hole?
I know light, and practically nothing but gravity can escape a black hole. My question is: can magnetism escape a black hole?
A couple things that convince me it can are:
Jupiter's magnetic field ...
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How is the diameter of a gas giant calculated?
As we know atmospheres of celestial bodies don't just stop at a given distance. They gradually become less dense as you move away from the center.
I understand that the diameter of stars is ...
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Can Jupiter's bands be made out using a 15x70 pair of binoculars? [closed]
I have been getting mixed opinions on this. I have a 15x70 Pair of Binoculars. I have tried staring at Jupiter for several minutes with it, I was able to see the Galilean moons, in fact the last time ...
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Is Jupiter made entirely out of gas?
I heard that Jupiter is made out of gas. But in school I learned that Jupiter has gravity which is 2.5 times that of Earth (Gravity that can tear apart a comet) and gravity is proportional to mass.
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What are the last images from the Galileo orbiter before impacting Jupiter?
NASA's Galileo orbiter at Jupiter ended its mission in 2003 by intentionally dive into the gas planet. Did it take and transmit any close up images before it ceased to function? If not, why? Are there ...
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Why is Jupiter's Great Red Spot reddish?
The Great Red Spot is a persistent anticyclonic storm, 22° south of Jupiter's equator. Why is it reddish?
From Wikipedia:
It is not known exactly what causes the Great Red Spot's reddish color.
Are ...
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Why does Jupiter break comets apart?
I understand that there are magnificent tidal forces that come with getting too close to Jupiter, but what is causing comets like Shoemaker-Levy to get torn apart?
I wouldn't expect that the ...
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Could we fly/drive through Jupiter?
If Jupiter is made of gas, could we fly or drive through it or would its center be too dense?
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If Jupiter is a gas-giant then why don't its features change?
A naive question. When we look at Jupiter, we see that its features didn't change largely over many years, for instance, the red-spot. If it is composed of gases and liquids, then why aren't the ...
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How big would the asteroid belt planet be?
As I understand it, the asteroid belt exists because the gravitational force of Jupiter prevents the asteroids from accreting (is that a word?) into a planet.
If, however, Jupiter didn't exist and ...
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Composition of planets' core
It is often possible to find a list of the materials that compose the cores and the mantle of plantes (often they are iron and/or nickel).
How can these materials be determined in our Solar system? ...
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Selecting a Telescope for Viewing Planets
I hope to observe planets like Jupiter and Saturn, and moons. I am a novice when it comes to telescopes and I know images in magazines are not taken with at least 12-inch telescope in a middle of ...
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What would the effects be on Earth if Jupiter was turned into a star?
In Clarke's book 2010, the monolith and its brethren turned Jupiter into the small star nicknamed Lucifer. Ignoring the reality that we won't have any magical ...
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Can the asteroid belt be seen from Jupiter?
Suppose that someone lives in the neighborhood of Jupiter. He may live in a space station around Jupiter, or in any ot it's moons (I believe that it doesn't matter for this question). If this person ...
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Will a new planet form if Jupiter's influence on asteroid belt will diminish in a few billion years?
I know that tidal forces are pushing Jupiter farther from the Sun, but I couldn't find exactly the yearly amount. In a few billion years would this effect (and subsequent decrease in gravity pull) ...
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Jupiter's magnetosphere interacts with the one from Saturn?
Jupiter's magnetosphere extends "seven million kilometers in the Sun's direction and almost to the orbit of Saturn in the opposite direction" and Saturn's magnetosphere extends towards the Sun on ...
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Why do Jovian moons fade when transiting Jupiter's shadow?
When reading an article on using Jovian moons to calculate longitude, I came across this passage:
Periodically, Jupiter eclipses each of the four large moons as they pass into the planet's mammoth ...
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What would happen if Jupiter and Earth were at the same distance as the Moon is from Earth?
If Spock came with a super machine capable of moving planets, and placed Earth so close to Jupiter as the Earth's moon, the gravity of Jupiter would make us fall into it?
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Why is every year the same number of days despite the gravity in the solar system?
I was just watching a Geoff Marcy talk on YouTube showing how they infer the presence of planets transiting distant stars. The supposed periodicity wasn't always quite regular from what I could see, ...
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Asteroids between Mars and Jupiter
Is the cluster of asteroids between Mars and Jupiter two dimensional as seen in every model of solar system shown in books or television? Or is it three dimensional as i think it should be?
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Is the Jupiter-Sun system considered a binary system of some type?
Since Jupiter is very massive, it is the only planet (in our solar system) that has a center of mass with the Sun that lies outside the volume of the Sun. (Source)
If Jupiter was a star, they would ...
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How was Io not torn apart by tidal forces during its formation?
Jupiter's moon Io is arguably one of the most volcanically active bodies in the Solar System. The reason, according to NASA's page Scientists to Io: Your Volcanoes Are in the Wrong Place is believed ...
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Are Barlow lenses stackable for bright objects?
I'm back to the refractor that I own, and I want to maximize the zoom capacity. I realized today that I own more than one barlow lens, and I was wondering if I could stack them together for looking at ...
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What Causes the Large Radiation Fields Around Jupiter?
I had heard that the large radiation belts around Jupiter may be formed by liquid metallic hydrogen in (or around) Jupiter's core (which Wikipedia says haven't been observed in labs yet due to the ...
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Why did the Comet Shoemaker-Levy-9 fragments cause such large explosions on Jupiter?
In July 1994, the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 (D/1993 F2) tidally fragmented and these fragments collided into Jupiter, as per the image below.
Image source
The question is, what mechanisms resulted in ...
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Jupiter FM - What are practical and inexpensive ways for the amateur detection of signals from Jupiter, especially of the transit of her moons?
What modifications to a standard AM/FM or shortwave radio are needed in order to be able to detect radio-wave signals emitted from Jupiter?
Would it be possible to detect the transit of the major ...
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Why does Jupiter have so many moons?
Jupiter has a great many moons - in the hundreds, and they're still being discovered.
What is the current theory for where all these moons came from? Are they rocks flying through space captured by ...
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Why do some planets have rings?
Some planets, specifically Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune in our solar system, have planetary rings.
Why do some planets have rings? How are they made and from what? Most importantly, will I ...
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