Here at KMH, the Boss came home with the task of looking into a planet in our solar system over the weekend. He chose the fifth planet from the sun, the amazing Jupiter. Here we have a picture of it to the right.

Jupiter is the biggest planet in our solar system, more than 10 times as wide as Earth and containing nearly three quarters of the planet matter! It is a giant planet made from gases and water, with many moons (39 we believe) orbiting it. Like earth, it orbits the sun, but it takes a long 12 years or so to complete that orbit. While Jupiter is not well known for it's rings (Saturn is well known for it's rings) it does have a ring of debris around it.

The atmosphere on Jupiter is not made of air like Earth, giving it a stripy orange look, and has huge lightning storms in it! One lightening storm is right where we can see a red area using telescopes and has been raging for 300 years or more. It covers an area big enough to wrap right around our Earth.

Here at KMH we think learning about the solar system is really exciting, so we should all try and know some more about the planets!

Tags: Jupiter, Astronomy