Telescopes allow us to see Jupiter and its moons in great detail. The latest probe to visit the planet is Juno, which entered Jupiter’s orbit on July 4, 2016. In late February 2007, Jupiter was visited by the New Horizons probe, which used Jupiter as a gravitational slingshot to accelerate on its way to Pluto. Jupiter has been explored on several occasions by robotic spacecraft, most notably during the early Pioneer and Voyager flyby missions of the 1970s. Ganymede, the largest of these, has a diameter greater than that of Mercury. Jupiter has at least 67 moons, including the four large Galilean moons discovered by Galileo Galilei in 1610. The planet’s magnetic field is thought to be generated by electrical currents in this layer. Jupiter’s core is thought to be molten and may be surrounded by a thick layer of liquid metallic hydrogen. The temperature and pressure in the interior increase with depth, reaching values typical of the Sun’s interior by the time one-third of the way to the center. The interior of Jupiter is mainly composed of hydrogen and helium. A prominent result is the Great Red Spot, a giant storm that is known to have existed since at least the 17th century when it was first seen by telescope. The outer atmosphere is visibly segregated into several bands at different latitudes, resulting in turbulence and storms along their interactions. Because of its rapid rotation, the planet’s shape is that of an oblate spheroid (it has a slight but noticeable bulge around the equator). It may also have a rocky core of heavier elements, but like the other giant planets, Jupiter lacks a well-defined solid surface. Jupiter is primarily composed of hydrogen with a quarter of its mass being helium, though helium only composes about a tenth of the number of molecules in Jupiter. When viewed from Earth, Jupiter can be bright enough to cast shadows, and is on average the third-brightest natural object in the night sky after the Moon and Venus. The Romans named it after their god Jupiter. Jupiter has been known to astronomers since antiquity. It is a gas giant with a mass one-thousandth that of the Sun, but two-and-a-half times that of all the other planets in the Solar System combined. Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest in the Solar System.
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