essay on planet jupiter

Planet Jupiter Facts and Information Essay

The study of the universe and other heavenly bodies has been one of the main concerns of scientists since the ancient world. The solar system has a series of planets and Jupiter is one of them. This planet was first discovered by scientists during the ancient period and it was closely linked with religious and mythical believes of many societies.

For example, the Romans called it Jupiter, a term which referred to one of their gods. Among the heavenly bodies visible in the sky at night, Jupiter is the third brightest. However, Mars can also have the same level of brightness at certain intervals in its orbit.

Jupiter has an oblate spheroid shape because it rotates very fast. It is mainly composed of gaseous and liquid substances. In terms of size, it is the largest of all the planets and it is number five from the sun. “The diameter of Jupiter is 142984 kilometers and its density is 1.326 g/cm 3 ” (Bova 125). The upper atmosphere of this planet is mainly made up of hydrogen which occupies ninety percent and helium nine percent.

The remaining one percent is occupied by small quantities of other gases like ammonia and water vapor. Silicon based compounds can also be found in the atmosphere. “Based on spectroscopy , Saturn is thought to be similar in composition to Jupiter, but the other gas giants Uranus and Neptune have relatively much less hydrogen and helium” (Bova 127).

The mass of Jupiter is two and a half times greater than the combined mass of all the remaining planets. The density of this planet is low despite its large size. “Jupiter’s volume is equal to 1,321 Earths, yet the planet is only 318 times as massive” (Cattermole 81). According to theoretical models, Jupiter would shrink if it had a greater mass than it has at present.

The heat generated in this planet is almost the same as the amount of solar radiation it gets from the sun. This process leads to the shrinking of the planet by approximately two centimeters annually. When this planet was formed, it was very hot and its diameter was double the current one.

Scientists believe that Jupiter has a dense core, which has several elements and it is also surrounded by a layer of gases “Rain-like droplets of helium and neon precipitate downward through this layer, depleting the abundance of these elements in the upper atmosphere” (Bova 201). A high temperature also builds toward the core of the planet. However, much is not known about the detailed structure of the core.

The formation of the core is believed to have taken place during the initial stages of the formation of Jupiter. The fact that Jupiter has a core was partially proved in 1997 through gravitational measurements. However, this fact has not been fully confirmed scientifically. “Jupiter is covered with clouds that have ammonia crystals and hydrosulfide” (Cattermole 159).

“Jupiter has a unique feature known the Great Red Spot , which is a persistent anti cyclonic storm located 22° south of the equator that is larger than the Earth” (Bova 267).

This feature has probably existed since 1665. Mathematical models indicate that this feature may permanently remain as part of Jupiter. This feature is very visible if one uses instruments such as telescopes to view it. The red sport is oval and rotates anticlockwise on Jupiter.

“In terms of rotation, Jupiter is the fastest in the solar system and within ten hours it can completely rotate within its axis” (Bova 128). The tilt of Jupiter is just 3.13° hence it does not have considerable changes in seasons. The sun and Jupiter are 778 million kilometers apart. Since Jupiter is not solid, it has equatorial and polar atmospheric rotations. The latter rotation lasts approximately longer than the former.

Even though some research has been done on Jupiter, more is still being done even today. Travelling from the earth to the other planets is very possible and many of such missions have successfully been conducted by scientists in the past. Galileo Galilei is one of the earliest scientists who did a lot of research on planets. For example, in 1973, the pioneer missions successfully got pictures of Jupiter.

The study of these planets has not been an easy task for the scientists and they have had to sacrifice a lot of their time and resources in order study them. Besides this, space exploration is a very dangerous adventure and many scientists have lost their lives in the process of moving to the planets.

Some of them even disappeared mysteriously and they have never been traced since they went for space exploration missions (Nickell 127). Nonetheless, space exploration has greatly contributed to scientific knowledge. With the introduction of sophisticated technology in space exploration, many scientists are now able to travel to various planets and most of them have had successful missions.

Works Cited

Bova, Ben. Jupiter . New York: Wiley, 2000.

Cattermole, Peter. Earth and Other Planets: Geology and Space Research. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.

Nickell, Duane. Guidebook for the Scientific Traveler: Visiting Astronomy and Space Exploration Sites Across America. New York: Rutgers University Press, 2008.

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All About Jupiter

Jupiter is a stormy planet that is probably best known for its Great Red Spot. The spot is actually a giant, wild storm that has been raging for more than 300 years. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Jupiter is the biggest planet in our solar system. It's similar to a star, but it never got massive enough to start burning. It is covered in swirling cloud stripes. It has big storms like the Great Red Spot, which has been going for hundreds of years. Jupiter is a gas giant and doesn't have a solid surface. It is still unclear if deeper down, Jupiter has a central core of solid material or if it may be a thick, super-hot and dense soup. Jupiter also has rings, but they're too faint to see very well.

Explore Jupiter! Click and drag to rotate the planet. Scroll or pinch to zoom in and out. Credit: NASA Visualization Technology Applications and Development (VTAD)

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Structure and Surface

• Jupiter is the biggest planet in our solar system. It is actually more than twice as massive than the other planets of our solar system combined.
• Jupiter is a gas giant. It is made mostly of hydrogen and helium.
• Jupiter has a very thick atmosphere.
• Jupiter has rings, but they’re very hard to see.
• The giant planet's Great Red Spot is a centuries-old storm bigger than Earth.

Time on Jupiter

• One day on Jupiter goes by in just 10 hours.
• One year on Jupiter is the same as 11.8 Earth years.

Jupiter's Neighbors

• Jupiter has 95 officially recognized moons.
• Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun. That means Mars and Saturn are Jupiter’s neighboring planets.

Quick History

• Jupiter has been known since ancient times because it can easily be seen with just our eyes. No special equipment is needed.
• Jupiter has been visited or passed by several spacecraft , orbiters and probes, such as Pioneer 10 and 11, Voyager 1 and 2, Cassini, New Horizons, and Juno.
• Jupiter has auroras , just like Earth! Not only are the auroras huge in size, they are also hundreds of times more energetic than auroras on Earth. And, unlike those on Earth, they never cease.

What does Jupiter look like?

This striking view of Jupiter's Great Red Spot and turbulent southern hemisphere was captured by NASA's Juno spacecraft as it performed a close pass of the gas giant planet. Credit: Enhanced image by Kevin M. Gill (CC-BY) based on images provided courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS

Astronomers are using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to study auroras — stunning light shows in a planet's atmosphere — on the poles of the largest planet in the solar system, Jupiter. Credits: NASA, ESA, and J. Nichols (University of Leicester)

This new Hubble Space Telescope view of Jupiter, taken on June 27, 2019, reveals the giant planet's trademark Great Red Spot, and a more intense color palette in the clouds swirling in Jupiter's turbulent atmosphere than seen in previous years. The colors, and their changes, provide important clues to ongoing processes in Jupiter's atmosphere. Credit: NASA, ESA, A. Simon (Goddard Space Flight Center), and M.H. Wong (University of California, Berkeley)

For more information visit:

Planet Jupiter Overview

Explore the Solar System

If you liked this, you may like:

Jupiter: A guide to the largest planet in the solar system

Jupiter has 79 moons and is known as the 'king of the planets'.

When was Jupiter discovered?

• Distance from the sun

Does Jupiter have a solid surface?

Jupiter faqs answered by an expert.

• What is Jupiter made of?
• The Great Red Spot

Jupiter's moons

Jupiter's rings.

• Missions to Jupiter
• Solar system history
• Life on Jupiter?
• Additional resources

Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system and the fifth planet from the sun. The gas giant has a long, rich, history of surprising scientists.

Named after the kind of the gods in Roman mythology this "king of the planets" is a stormy enigma shrouded in colorful clouds. Its most prominent and most famous storm, the Great Red Spot , is twice the width of Earth . 

Since 2016, the NASA spacecraft Juno has been investigating Jupiter and its moons.

Related: Gas giants: Jovian planets of our solar system and beyond

Jupiter helped to revolutionize the way we saw the universe — and our place in it — in 1610 when Galileo discovered Jupiter, along with its four large moons: Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto. 

These observations were the first time that celestial bodies were seen circling an object other than Earth and supported the Copernican view that Earth was not the center of the universe.

How big is Jupiter?

Jupiter is more than twice as massive as all the other planets combined, according to NASA . Jupiter's immense volume could hold more than 1,300 Earths. If Jupiter were the size of a basketball, Earth would be the size of a grape.

Jupiter was probably the first planet to form in the solar system , made up of gasses left over from the formation of the sun . If the planet had been about 80 times more massive during its development, it would have actually become a star in its own right , according to NASA. 

Related: How big is Jupiter?

How far is Jupiter from the sun?

On average, Jupiter orbits at about 483,682,810 miles (778,412,020 kilometers) from the sun . That's 5.203 times farther than Earth's average distance from the sun. 

At perihelion, when Jupiter is closest to the sun, the planet is 460,276,100 miles (740,742,600 km) away. 

At aphelion or the farthest distance that Jupiter reaches from the sun, it is 507,089,500 miles (816,081,400 km) away. 

Jupiter is a gas giant planet, as such it does not have a true solid surface. A spacecraft would not be able to land on the giant planet nor could it fly right through unscathed due to the crushing pressures and extreme temperatures it would experience during its journey.

We asked Leigh Fletcher, a professor of planetary science a few commonly asked questions about Jupiter.

Leigh Fletcher is a   professor of planetary science at the University of Leicester in the U.K. Fletcher researches the atmospheres and climate of gas giants to understand how the planets formed.

Is Jupiter a gas planet?

Yes, but don't be fooled into thinking that Jupiter is like a big cloud of gas that you could fly through, it's more like a fluid planet that gets denser and hotter the deeper you go. 

Pressures at the colorful cloud tops are not dissimilar to those in Earth's atmosphere, but they build up as you go deeper, rather like a submarine experiencing crushing densities as it sinks deeper and deeper into our oceans. In fact, the hydrogen that is Jupiter's dominant gas gets compressed to such extremes that it changes to an exotic metallic hydrogen form.  So think of Jupiter as a bottomless ocean of strange, exotic materials.

What is the Great Red Spot on Jupiter?

Jupiter's famous Great Red Spot is a swirling vortex — technically an anticyclone because it rotates anticlockwise in Jupiter's southern hemisphere. This vortex is big enough to swallow the Earth twice over, and the winds that whip around its edges do a good job of keeping the calm air inside the vortex separated from turbulent, stormy air outside.  

The calm air in the interior gets cooked by the ultraviolet light from the sun, creating chemicals and hazes that are very good absorbers of blue light, leaving only red light to be reflected back towards an observer. The Great Red Spot has been around since at least the Victorian era, almost two centuries ago, but has been steadily shrinking in east-west extend for much of that time.

Is there a planet bigger than Jupiter?

Almost certainly, but not here in our solar system.  Jupiter and Saturn are the big Gas Giants, Uranus and Neptune are more "intermediate-sized" Ice Giants, whereas the rocky terrestrial planets are much smaller.  When we look out at the incredible range of exoplanets being discovered around other stars, more than 5000 at the last count, we do see evidence for larger planets, some of which are "puffed up" because they're really close to their parent stars and getting a lot of energy from them to heat their atmospheres to thousands of degrees.

Why is Jupiter sometimes called a "failed star"?

Jupiter and the other giant planets are essentially made of the same stuff as the sun, albeit with a few changes to the basic ingredients beyond hydrogen and helium.  So give them a lot more material to start with, and they could ignite nuclear fusion of their hydrogen to form helium, therefore becoming a star.  But brown dwarfs sit in between giant planets and main-sequence stars, too small and light to burn hydrogen, but possibly heavy enough to burn deuterium via nuclear fusion, when they're about 13 times more massive than our Jupiter. 

Jupiter's environment

Jupiter's atmosphere resembles that of the sun, made up mostly of hydrogen and helium. A helium-rich layer of fluid metallic hydrogen envelops a “fuzzy” or partially-dissolved core at the center of the planet. 

The colorful light and dark bands that surround Jupiter are created by strong east-west winds in the planet's upper atmosphere traveling more than 335 mph (539 km/h). The white clouds in the light zones are made of crystals of frozen ammonia, while darker clouds made of other chemicals are found in the dark belts. At the deepest visible levels are blue clouds. Far from being static, the stripes of clouds change over time . 

Inside the atmosphere, diamond rain may fill the skies, and hidden deep within the atmosphere is a dense core of unknown composition .

Jupiter's gargantuan magnetic field is the strongest of all the planets in the solar system, at nearly 20,000 times the strength of Earth's, according to the University of Colorado at Boulder . The magnetic field traps electrons and other electrically charged particles in an intense belt that regularly blasts the planet's moons and rings with radiation more than 1,000 times the level lethal to a human. The radiation is severe enough to damage even heavily shielded spacecraft, such as NASA's Galileo probe . The magnetosphere of Jupiter swells out some 600,000 to 2 million miles (1 million to 3 million km) toward the sun and tapers to a tail extending more than 600 million miles (1 billion km) behind the massive planet.

Does Jupiter have rings?

The star-tracker camera aboard NASA’s Juno spacecraft captured this view of Jupiter's faint rings on Aug. 27, 2016, during the probe's first data-gathering close approach to the giant planet. It’s the first-ever view of the planet's rings from inside of them. The bright star above the main ring is Betelgeuse, and Orion’s belt can be seen in the lower right. 

What is the Great Red Spot?

One of Jupiter's most famous features is the Great Red Spot, a giant hurricane-like storm that's lasted more than 300 years. According to NASA, the Great Red Spot at its widest is about twice the size of Earth , and its edge spins counterclockwise around its center at speeds of about 270 to 425 mph (430 to 680 kph). That counterclockwise spin makes it a type of storm called an "anticyclone."

The color of the storm, which usually varies from brick red to slightly brown, may come from small amounts of sulfur and phosphorus in the ammonia crystals in Jupiter's clouds. The spot has been shrinking for quite some time, although the rate may be slowing in recent years. 

Jupiter has many other storms, too. According to 2022 data from Juno, Jupiter's gargantuan polar cyclones are driven by convection or heat rising from lower altitudes to the higher atmosphere, similar to the way ocean vortexes work on Earth. 

Jupiter has a mind-boggling 79 known moons, mostly named after the paramours and descendants of the Roman god of the same name. The four largest moons of Jupiter called Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto, were discovered by Galileo Galilei and so are sometimes called the Galilean moons.

Related: Jupiter's moons: Facts about the many moons of the Jovian system

Ganymede is the largest moon in our solar system, and is larger than both Pluto and Mercury. It is also the only moon known to have its own magnetic field, whose eerie sound NASA's Juno mission captured in 2021. The moon has at least one ocean between layers of ice, although according to a 2014 study from the journal Planetary and Space Science, it may contain several layers of ice and water stacked on top of one another, along with atmospheric water vapor first spotted in 2021. Ganymede will be the main target of the European Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) spacecraft scheduled to launch in 2023 and arrive at Jupiter's system in 2030.

Io is the most volcanically active body in our solar system. As Io orbits Jupiter, the planet's immense gravity causes "tides" in Io's solid surface that rise 300 feet (100 meters) high and generate enough heat to spur on volcanism. Those volcanoes release more than one ton of material every second into the space around the moon, helping to create strange radio waves from Jupiter. The sulfur its volcanoes spew gives Io a blotted yellow-orange appearance, leading some to compare it to a pepperoni pizza. 

The frozen crust of Europa is made up mostly of water ice, and it may hide a liquid ocean that contains twice as much water as Earth's oceans do. Some of this liquid spouts from out of Europa's southern pole in sporadic plumes , and in 2021 the Hubble Space Telescope spotted more water vapor above Europa's surface. Also in 2021, Europa's north pole was photographed for the first time , and the discovery of underwater volcanoes raised hopes that Europa could be hospitable to life.

With the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, NASA may someday send an autonomous submersible to explore Europa's ice-covered oceans. Additionally, NASA's Europa Clipper mission , a planned spacecraft that would launch in the 2020s, would perform 40 to 45 flybys to examine the habitability of the icy moon.

Callisto has the lowest reflectivity, or albedo, of the four Galilean moons. This suggests that its surface may be composed of dark, colorless rock. Once considered a boring counterpart to the other Galilean moons, Callisto's heavily-cratered surface might conceal a secret ocean , according to NASA.

Jupiter's three faint rings came as a surprise when NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft discovered them around the planet's equator in 1979. Much more tenuous than Saturn's chunky, colorful rings, Jupiter's rings are made of continuous streams of dust particles emitted by some of the planet's moons, according to NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center . 

The main ring is flattened, according to the Southwest Research Institute's (SwRI's) Juno Mission website. It is about 20 miles (30 km) thick and more than 4,000 miles (6,400 km) wide.

The inner donut-shaped (also called “toroidal”) ring, called the halo, is more than 12,000 miles (20,000 km) thick, wrote SwRI. The halo is caused by electromagnetic forces that push grains away from the plane of the main ring. Both the main ring and halo are composed of small, dark particles of dust.

The third ring, known as the gossamer ring because of its transparency, is actually three rings of microscopic debris from three of Jupiter's moons: Amalthea , Thebe and Adrastea. According to a press release from NASA's Galileo mission, the gossamer ring is probably made up of dust particles about the same size as the particles found in cigarette smoke, and extends to an outer edge of about 80,000 miles (129,000 km) from the center of the planet and inward to about 18,600 miles (30,000 km).

Ripples in the rings of both Jupiter and Saturn may be signs of impacts from comets and asteroids.

Exploring Jupiter

NASA's Juno mission arrived at Jupiter in 2016 with an intended lifespan of about 20 months in orbit, but as of 2022 continues to return beautiful images, audio and other data, with its mission extended until 2025. 

— Jupiter's auroras arise from a magnetic 'tug-of-war' with volcanic eruptions on its moon Io — Happy birthday, Juno! NASA's Jupiter probe launched 10 years ago today — NASA's Juno spacecraft spots 'sprites' and 'elves' dancing in Jupiter's atmosphere — Behold! Jupiter is a breathtaking 'marble' in this NASA Juno photo

Historically, nine missions have flown by Jupiter —  seven have flown past, Pioneer 10 , Pioneer 11 , Voyager 1, Voyager 2 , Ulysses, Cassini and New Horizons . Only two missions — NASA's Galileo and Juno — have orbited the planet. 

Related: Jupiter missions: Past, present and future

Pioneer 10 revealed how dangerous Jupiter's radiation belt is, while Pioneer 11 provided data on the Great Red Spot and close-up pictures of Jupiter's polar regions. Voyagers 1 and 2 helped astronomers create the first detailed maps of the Galilean satellites, discovered Jupiter's rings, revealed sulfur volcanoes on Io and detected lightning in Jupiter's clouds. Ulysses discovered that the solar wind has a much greater impact on Jupiter's magnetosphere than scientists previously thought. New Horizons took close-up pictures of Jupiter and its largest moons.

Jupiter's first orbiter, Galileo, arrived in 1995 and soon sent a probe plunging toward Jupiter, making the first direct measurements of the planet's atmosphere and measuring the amount of water and other chemicals there. Then the main spacecraft spent eight years studying the system. When Galileo itself ran low on fuel, the spacecraft intentionally crashed into Jupiter to avoid any risk of it bringing contamination from Earth to Europa, which might have an ocean below its surface capable of supporting life.

Now, Juno studies Jupiter from a polar orbit, in part to figure out how it and the rest of the solar system formed. Researchers hope the mission could also shed light on how alien planetary systems might have developed. According to data from Juno, Jupiter's core may be larger than scientists expected, while Jupiter's stripes and storms stretch from high in the atmosphere to deep inside the planet. In a 2021 NASA overview of Juno's biggest hits, the agency also included observing lightning on Jupiter, detecting water in the atmosphere and measuring magnetic fields 10 times stronger than any found on Earth.

Although no missions dedicated to Jupiter itself are in the works, two future spacecraft will study Jupiter's moons: NASA's Europa Clipper (which would launch in the mid-2020s) and the European Space Agency's Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) which will launch in 2023 and arrive at Jupiter's system in 2030 to study Ganymede, Callisto and Europa.

 Researchers say that the gas giant will also be a " proving ground " for the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Scientists are eager to explore Jupiter during the first year of scientific observations of the powerful telescope. With Webb's sights set on exploring Jupiter and its moons scientists are excited at the prospect of understanding some of Jupiter's greatest mysteries such as how such a  massive storm — the Great Red Spot — forms in the turbulent atmosphere or how its largest moons may harbor oceans of water of hidden volcanoes. 

On July 14, 2022, the JWST team released a few tantalizing photos of Jupiter that were captured during the commissioning period. In some of the images, Jupiter's thin ring structure and its moons Europa, Thebe and Metis, are captured through JWST's NIRCam. 

How did Jupiter shape our solar system?

As the most massive body in the solar system after the sun, Jupiter has helped shape the fate of our neighborhood in space with its immense gravity. 

Jupiter's gravity has been found responsible for slinging Neptune and Uranus (along with a host of smaller objects like asteroids) away from the sun, according to a 2005 paper published in the journal Nature . That paper established a theory of "planetary genealogy" called the Nice model, named after the French city where it was developed. 

According to the Nice model, Jupiter and other gas giants were also responsible for the Late Heavy Bombardment , a period of time when the young planet Earth and its nearby fellows were barraged with debris. 

Nowadays, Jupiter may help keep asteroids and comets from bombarding Earth, protecting the inner planets by acting as the "vacuum cleaner of the solar system," wrote SwRI . Its enormous gravity can suck in and absorb smaller objects — as with the spectacular 1994 collision of Jupiter and Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 — or propel them out of the solar system entirely. But that same gravity can still accelerate some of those objects toward the inner planets, too, so it's a mixed blessing.

Could there be life on Jupiter?

Jupiter's atmosphere grows warmer with depth, reaching room temperature, or 70 degrees Fahrenheit (21 degrees Celsius), at an altitude where the atmospheric pressure is about 10 times as great as it is on Earth. Scientists suspect that if Jupiter has any form of life, it would have to be airborne at this level. Theoretically, a 2021 study found, that there is enough water to support some life. However, researchers have found no evidence of life on Jupiter.

Jupiter's moons are a different story: Europa in particular could host a radiation-shielded hidden ocean, and marine life might float somewhere in those alien waters.

Additional resources and reading

Read this 2018 interview from PBS NewsHour with JunoCam’s lead scientist Candice Hansen-Koharchek, who connects the camera aboard NASA's Juno mission to the public and lets anyone participate in the science around Jupiter. For more on Jupiter's possible past as a major mover-and-shaker in the solar system, read this overview article published in 2020 by the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that discusses both the Nice model and newer theories of Jupiter's history. Writer Marina Koren discovers that Jupiter's Great Red Spot might actually be more of a pale rosy color in this piece from The Atlantic on the true colors of the solar system. And for an in-depth video look at the solar system's biggest planet, check out the Jupiter episode of NOVA 's "The Planets" series, narrated by actor Zachary Quinto. 

Bibliography:

• Barnett, Amanda. "In Depth | Callisto." NASA Solar System Exploration. Accessed Feb. 4, 2022. https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/moons/jupiter-moons/callisto/in-depth .
• Ibid. "Jupiter." NASA Solar System Exploration. Accessed Feb. 3, 2022. https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/jupiter/overview .
• Ibid. "Overview | Juno." NASA Solar System Exploration. NASA, Nov. 9, 2021. https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/missions/juno/overview .
• "Jupiter's Magnetic Field, Radiation Belts, and Radio Noise | Exploring the Planets | National Air and Space Museum." Accessed Feb. 4, 2022. https://airandspace.si.edu/exhibitions/exploring-the-planets/online/solar-system/jupiter/environment.cfm .
• "Jupiter's Ring Formation Theories Confirmed." Other. NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Sept. 24, 2009. https://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/multimedia/largest/rings.html .
• Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics. "The Outer Planets: Giant Planets: Magnetospheres." University of Colorado at Boulder, Aug. 2007. https://lasp.colorado.edu/outerplanets/giantplanets_magnetospheres.php .
• Martinez, Carolina. "NASA - Jupiter's Shadow Sculpts Its Rings." Feature. NASA JPL, April 30, 2008. https://www.nasa.gov/topics/solarsystem/features/galileo-20080430.html .
• Southwest Research Institute. "Great Red Spot." Mission Juno. NASA. Accessed Feb. 3, 2022. https://www.missionjuno.swri.edu/jupiter/great-red-spot .
• Ibid. "Jupiter's Influence." Mission Juno. NASA. Accessed Feb. 9, 2022. https://www.missionjuno.swri.edu/origin .
• Steigerwald, Bill. "Juno Tunes into Jovian Radio Triggered by Jupiter's Volcanic Moon." Text. NASA, May 20, 2021. http://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2021/juno-jupiter-radio .

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Jupiter is the fifth planet from our Sun and is, by far, the largest planet in the solar system – more than twice as massive as all the other planets combined. Jupiter's stripes and swirls are actually cold, windy clouds of ammonia and water, floating in an atmosphere of hydrogen and helium. Jupiter’s iconic Great Red Spot is a giant storm bigger than Earth that has raged for hundreds of years.

Jupiter is surrounded by dozens of moons. Jupiter also has several rings, but unlike the famous rings of Saturn, Jupiter’s rings are very faint and made of dust, not ice.

Jupiter, being the biggest planet, gets its name from the king of the ancient Roman gods.

Potential for Life

Jupiter’s environment is probably not conducive to life as we know it. The temperatures, pressures, and materials that characterize this planet are most likely too extreme and volatile for organisms to adapt to.

While planet Jupiter is an unlikely place for living things to take hold, the same is not true of some of its many moons. Europa is one of the likeliest places to find life elsewhere in our solar system. There is evidence of a vast ocean just beneath its icy crust, where life could possibly be supported.

Size and Distance

With a radius of 43,440.7 miles (69,911 kilometers), Jupiter is 11 times wider than Earth. If Earth were the size of a nickel, Jupiter would be about as big as a basketball.

From an average distance of 484 million miles (778 million kilometers), Jupiter is 5.2 astronomical units away from the Sun. One astronomical unit (abbreviated as AU), is the distance from the Sun to Earth. From this distance, it takes Sunlight 43 minutes to travel from the Sun to Jupiter.

Orbit and Rotation

Jupiter has the shortest day in the solar system. One day on Jupiter takes only about 10 hours (the time it takes for Jupiter to rotate or spin around once), and Jupiter makes a complete orbit around the Sun (a year in Jovian time) in about 12 Earth years (4,333 Earth days).

Its equator is tilted with respect to its orbital path around the Sun by just 3 degrees. This means Jupiter spins nearly upright and does not have seasons as extreme as other planets do.

With four large moons and many smaller moons, Jupiter forms a kind of miniature solar system. Jupiter has 80 moons. Fifty-seven moons have been given official names by the International Astronomical Union (IAU). Another 23 moons are awaiting names.

Jupiter's four largest moons – Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto – were first observed by the astronomer Galileo Galilei in 1610 using an early version of the telescope. These four moons are known today as the Galilean satellites, and they're some of the most fascinating destinations in our solar system. Io is the most volcanically active body in the solar system. Ganymede is the largest moon in the solar system (even bigger than the planet Mercury). Callisto’s very few small craters indicate a small degree of current surface activity. A liquid-water ocean with the ingredients for life may lie beneath the frozen crust of Europa, making it a tempting place to explore.

› More on Jupiter's Moons

Discovered in 1979 by NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft, Jupiter's rings were a surprise, as they are composed of small, dark particles and are difficult to see except when backlit by the Sun. Data from the Galileo spacecraft indicate that Jupiter's ring system may be formed by dust kicked up as interplanetary meteoroids smash into the giant planet's small innermost moons.

Jupiter took shape when the rest of the solar system formed about 4.5 billion years ago when gravity pulled swirling gas and dust in to become this gas giant. Jupiter took most of the mass left over after the formation of the Sun, ending up with more than twice the combined material of the other bodies in the solar system. In fact, Jupiter has the same ingredients as a star, but it did not grow massive enough to ignite.

About 4 billion years ago, Jupiter settled into its current position in the outer solar system, where it is the fifth planet from the Sun.

The composition of Jupiter is similar to that of the Sun – mostly hydrogen and helium. Deep in the atmosphere, pressure and temperature increase, compressing the hydrogen gas into a liquid. This gives Jupiter the largest ocean in the solar system – an ocean made of hydrogen instead of water. Scientists think that, at depths perhaps halfway to the planet's center, the pressure becomes so great that electrons are squeezed off the hydrogen atoms, making the liquid electrically conducting like metal. Jupiter's fast rotation is thought to drive electrical currents in this region, generating the planet's powerful magnetic field. It is still unclear if deeper down, Jupiter has a central core of solid material or if it may be a thick, super-hot and dense soup. It could be up to 90,032 degrees Fahrenheit (50,000 degrees Celsius) down there, made mostly of iron and silicate minerals (similar to quartz).

As a gas giant, Jupiter doesn’t have a true surface. The planet is mostly swirling gases and liquids. While a spacecraft would have nowhere to land on Jupiter, it wouldn’t be able to fly through unscathed either. The extreme pressures and temperatures deep inside the planet crush, melt, and vaporize spacecraft trying to fly into the planet.

Jupiter's appearance is a tapestry of colorful cloud bands and spots. The gas planet likely has three distinct cloud layers in its "skies" that, taken together, span about 44 miles (71 kilometers). The top cloud is probably made of ammonia ice, while the middle layer is likely made of ammonium hydrosulfide crystals. The innermost layer may be made of water ice and vapor.

The vivid colors you see in thick bands across Jupiter may be plumes of sulfur and phosphorus-containing gases rising from the planet's warmer interior. Jupiter's fast rotation – spinning once every 10 hours – creates strong jet streams, separating its clouds into dark belts and bright zones across long stretches.

With no solid surface to slow them down, Jupiter's spots can persist for many years. Stormy Jupiter is swept by over a dozen prevailing winds, some reaching up to 335 miles per hour (539 kilometers per hour) at the equator. The Great Red Spot, a swirling oval of clouds twice as wide as Earth, has been observed on the giant planet for more than 300 years. More recently, three smaller ovals merged to form the Little Red Spot, about half the size of its larger cousin.

Findings from NASA’s Juno probe released in October 2021 provide a fuller picture of what’s going on below those clouds. Data from Juno shows that Jupiter’s cyclones are warmer on top, with lower atmospheric densities, while they are colder at the bottom, with higher densities. Anticyclones, which rotate in the opposite direction, are colder at the top but warmer at the bottom.

The findings also indicate these storms are far taller than expected, with some extending 60 miles (100 kilometers) below the cloud tops and others, including the Great Red Spot, extending over 200 miles (350 kilometers). This surprising discovery demonstrates that the vortices cover regions beyond those where water condenses and clouds form, below the depth where sunlight warms the atmosphere.

The height and size of the Great Red Spot mean the concentration of atmospheric mass within the storm potentially could be detectable by instruments studying Jupiter’s gravity field. Two close Juno flybys over Jupiter’s most famous spot provided the opportunity to search for the storm’s gravity signature and complement the other results on its depth.

With their gravity data, the Juno team was able to constrain the extent of the Great Red Spot to a depth of about 300 miles (500 kilometers) below the cloud tops.

Belts and Zones In addition to cyclones and anticyclones, Jupiter is known for its distinctive belts and zones – white and reddish bands of clouds that wrap around the planet. Strong east-west winds moving in opposite directions separate the bands. Juno previously discovered that these winds, or jet streams, reach depths of about 2,000 miles (roughly 3,200 kilometers). Researchers are still trying to solve the mystery of how the jet streams form. Data collected by Juno during multiple passes reveal one possible clue: that the atmosphere’s ammonia gas travels up and down in remarkable alignment with the observed jet streams.

Juno’s data also shows that the belts and zones undergo a transition around 40 miles (65 kilometers) beneath Jupiter’s water clouds. At shallow depths, Jupiter’s belts are brighter in microwave light than the neighboring zones. But at deeper levels, below the water clouds, the opposite is true – which reveals a similarity to our oceans.

Polar Cyclones Juno previously discovered polygonal arrangements of giant cyclonic storms at both of Jupiter’s poles – eight arranged in an octagonal pattern in the north and five arranged in a pentagonal pattern in the south. Over time, mission scientists determined these atmospheric phenomena are extremely resilient, remaining in the same location.

Juno data also indicates that, like hurricanes on Earth, these cyclones want to move poleward, but cyclones located at the center of each pole push them back. This balance explains where the cyclones reside and the different numbers at each pole.

Magnetosphere

The Jovian magnetosphere is the region of space influenced by Jupiter's powerful magnetic field. It balloons 600,000 to 2 million miles (1 to 3 million kilometers) toward the Sun (seven to 21 times the diameter of Jupiter itself) and tapers into a tadpole-shaped tail extending more than 600 million miles (1 billion kilometers) behind Jupiter, as far as Saturn's orbit. Jupiter's enormous magnetic field is 16 to 54 times as powerful as that of the Earth. It rotates with the planet and sweeps up particles that have an electric charge. Near the planet, the magnetic field traps swarms of charged particles and accelerates them to very high energies, creating intense radiation that bombards the innermost moons and can damage spacecraft.

Jupiter's magnetic field also causes some of the solar system's most spectacular aurorae at the planet's poles.

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• NASA's Juno Mission

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This gas giant is home to a massive storm that has lasted hundreds of years

Jupiter’s Great Red Spot — a massive storm that has raged for hundreds of years — makes this gas giant instantly recognizable.

NASA, ESA, A. Simon (Goddard Space Flight Center) and M.H. Wong (Univ. of California, Berkeley)

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By Sarah Zielinski

May 27, 2020 at 6:30 am

If you went looking for a planet as different from Earth as you could find, you wouldn’t have to go all that far, at least in space terms. Just look to the fifth planet in our solar system, Jupiter. This gas giant  has no solid surface. Its diameter is more than 11 times as great as Earth’s. Its mass is more than twice than that of all the other planets in the solar system combined. Jupiter’s atmosphere is covered with bands of clouds and punctured by vast rotating storms . The most famous of these is the Great Red Spot , which is so big that Earth could fit inside it!

Jupiter is also a planet full of mysteries. Those thick bands of clouds hide what is happening inside the planet. Is there water? How much? And does Jupiter have a solid core? Studying the auroras at the poles could lead to insights about Jupiter’s magnetic fields. And then there’s the question of just what drives those monster storms.

Scientists have sent nine spacecraft to study Jupiter. The most recent was Juno , which arrived at the planet in July 2016. It will orbit this gas giant at least until July 2021. When the spacecraft is finally decommissioned, its Earth-bound pilots will send it on a path to plunge to its death into the Jovian atmosphere.

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Jupiter’s Great Red Spot is really, really hot : The giant storm may help explain why the planet’s atmosphere is so warm (8/23/2016) Readability: 7.3

Jupiter has 12 more moons than we knew about — and one is a weirdo : The oddball moon, called Valetudo, may collide with its neighbors within a billion years (8/20/2018) Readability: 7.8

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Jupiter 101

Jupiter is the oldest and most massive world in the solar system. Learn about the planet's origin story, its Great Red Spot and oceanic moons, and how this ancient world influenced the formation of the solar system's other planets.

Earth Science, Astronomy

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Essay on Jupiter

Students are often asked to write an essay on Jupiter in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Jupiter

Introduction to jupiter.

Jupiter is the largest planet in our solar system. It’s a gas giant, which means it’s made mostly of hydrogen and helium, just like the Sun.

Jupiter’s Features

Jupiter is famous for its Great Red Spot, a storm bigger than Earth. It also has thin rings and over 75 moons, including Ganymede, the biggest moon in the solar system.

Jupiter’s Role in the Solar System

Jupiter’s strong gravity protects Earth by attracting comets and asteroids that might otherwise hit us. It’s a vital part of our solar system’s balance.

250 Words Essay on Jupiter

Introduction.

Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system, is a gas giant that has intrigued scientists for centuries. Its colossal size and distinctive atmospheric features make it a fascinating subject of study.

Physical Characteristics

Jupiter is renowned for its enormous size, being 11 times the diameter of Earth. It is composed primarily of hydrogen and helium, similar to the Sun. Its iconic feature, the Great Red Spot, is a storm that has persisted for at least 300 years, demonstrating the planet’s dynamic atmosphere.

Orbit and Rotation

Jupiter has the shortest day of all the planets, rotating on its axis every 9.9 hours. However, its orbit around the Sun is slow, taking approximately 11.86 Earth years.

Satellites and Rings

Jupiter’s gravitational pull supports a vast system of satellites. It has 79 known moons, the four largest being the Galilean moons. Additionally, Jupiter has faint rings composed of tiny dust particles.

Exploration

Human understanding of Jupiter has been significantly enhanced by spacecraft, such as the Pioneer, Voyager, and Juno missions. These missions have provided invaluable data about Jupiter’s magnetic field, composition, and the potential for a solid core.

Jupiter’s unique characteristics, including its size, composition, and extensive moon system, continue to captivate scientists. Its exploration offers invaluable insights into the formation and evolution of our solar system. Future missions are expected to unravel more of Jupiter’s mysteries, contributing to our understanding of the universe.

500 Words Essay on Jupiter

Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system, has been a subject of fascination for astronomers and scientists alike. Its grandeur, coupled with its unique characteristics, makes it a compelling study in the field of planetary science.

Jupiter is a gas giant, primarily composed of hydrogen and helium, mirroring the sun’s composition. Its diameter is about 11 times that of Earth, and it possesses a strong magnetic field. Its most distinctive feature is the Great Red Spot, a storm that has been raging for at least 300 years. Jupiter’s rapid rotation (a day on Jupiter is only 9.9 Earth hours) causes its shape to be an oblate spheroid, meaning it’s flattened at the poles and bulging at the equator.

Atmospheric Conditions

Jupiter’s atmosphere is as intriguing as its physical features. It is composed mainly of molecular hydrogen and helium in roughly solar proportions; other chemical compounds are present only in small amounts and include methane, ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, and water. The atmosphere exhibits a banded structure similar to Earth’s Hadley cells but on a much larger scale. The bands are formed by differing wind speeds at varying latitudes.

Jupiter’s Moons

Jupiter’s system is a miniaturized solar system in itself, with 79 known moons. The four largest, known as the Galilean moons (Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto), were discovered by Galileo Galilei in 1610. Each of these moons is a unique world. For instance, Ganymede is the largest moon in the solar system, and Europa is believed to harbor a subsurface ocean that may be twice the volume of all Earth’s oceans combined.

As the largest planet, Jupiter does play a significant role in the solar system. Its immense gravity influences the paths of comets, asteroids, and even other planets. Some scientists believe that Jupiter’s gravitational influence has helped shield Earth from excessive comet bombardments.

Exploration of Jupiter

Jupiter’s exploration has been conducted primarily via robotic spacecraft sent by NASA, including the Pioneer, Voyager, Galileo, Juno, and recently planned Clipper missions. These missions have provided invaluable information about Jupiter’s structure, atmosphere, magnetosphere, and moons. The ongoing Juno mission is currently studying Jupiter’s composition, gravity field, magnetic field, and polar magnetosphere.

Jupiter’s sheer size and unique characteristics make it a subject of ongoing interest for astronomers. Its influence on the solar system is significant, and its numerous moons present a wide array of environments for study. As we continue to explore Jupiter through advanced space missions, we can hope to further unravel the mysteries of this gas giant, enhancing our understanding of the universe in the process.

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• Polar regions
• Temperate regions
• Tropical regions
• Equatorial regions

Each region consists of:

• Belts - darker bands - falling gas - low pressure
• Zones - lighter bands - rising gas - high pressure

The belts and zone provide the swirling affects. The rotation of Jupiter is the engine that drives all of the motion as well as internal heat. Because of internal heating, the wind speeds can reach up to 500 km/h.

Since its not a solid body like Earth , rotation is differential like our Sun - the center rotates faster than the poles. The image below demonstrates the atmospheric structure of the Gas Giants including Jupiter:

• 1000 km thick atmosphere
• Liquid hydrogen "crust" - very thick
• Liquid metallic hydrogen "mantle"

The liquid metallic hydrogen interior provides the solution for Jupiter's intense magnetic field.

Jupiter Exploration

While Jupiter has been known since ancient times, the first detailed observations of this planet were made by Galileo Galilei in 1610 with a small telescope. More recently, this planet has been visited by passing spacecraft, orbiters and probes. Pioneer 10 and 11 and Voyager 1 and 2 were the first to fly by Jupiter in the 1970s, and since then we’ve sent Galileo to orbit the gas giant and drop a probe into its atmosphere. Cassini took detailed photos of Jupiter on its way to neighboring Saturn, as did New Horizons on its quest for Pluto and the Kuiper Belt. NASA’s Juno spacecraft, which arrived in the Jovian system in July 2016, is currently studying the giant planet from orbit.

Past missions

Missions en route.

Lucy & ESA's JUICE

Future Missions

Europa clipper, missions to jupiter.

Pioneer 10 was designed as a 21-month mission to Jupiter, yet lasted more than 30 years.

Voyager 1 surprised scientists by spotting volcanoes on Jupiter's moon Io. 

Voyager 2 flew by Jupiter and returned spectacular photos and unprecedented data. 

Galileo changed the way we look at our solar system.

New Horizons

New Horizons captured impressive pictures of Jupiter's moons Io, Europa, and Ganymede.

Juno is probing beneath Jupiter's dense clouds to answer questions about its origin and evolution

The Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer from ESA (European Space Agency), is en route to study Jupiter and its three large ocean-bearing moons – Ganymede, Callisto and Europa.

A NASA mission to visit Europa in 2030 to see if the moon's sub-surface ocean has conditions suitable to support life.

Discover More Topics From NASA

Asteroids, Comets & Meteors

Kuiper Belt

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The planet Jupiter

• Published: September 1999
• Volume 9 , pages 171–219, ( 1999 )

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• Thérèse Encrenaz 1  

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The exploration of Jupiter, the closest and biggest giant planet, has provided key information about the origin and evolution of the outer Solar system. Our knowledge has strongly benefited from the Voyager and Galileo space missions. We now have a good understanding of Jupiter's thermal structure, chemical composition and magnetospheric environment.

There is still debate about the nature of the heating source responsible for the high thermospheric temperatures (precipitating particles and/or gravity waves). The measurement of elemental abundance ratios (C/H, N/H, S/H) gives strong support to the “nucleation” formation model, according to which giant planets formed from the accretion of an initial core and the collapse of the surrounding gaseous protosolar nebula. The D/H and \(^3\) He/ \(^4\) He ratios are found to be representative of their protosolar value. The helium abundance, in contrast, appears to be slightly depleted in the outer envelope with respect to the protosolar value; this departure is interpreted as an evolutionary effect, due to the condensation of helium droplets in the liquid hydrogen ocean inside Jupiter's interior.

The cloud structure of Jupiter, characterized by the belt-zone system, is globally understood; also present are specific features like regions of strong infrared radiation (“hot spots”), colder regions (“white ovals”) and the Great Red Spot (GRS). Clouds were surprisingly absent at the hot spot corresponding to the Galileo probe entry site, and the water abundance measured there was strongly depleted with respect to the solar O/H value. This probably implies that hot spots are dry, cloud-free regions of subsidence, while “normal” air, rich in condensibles, is transported upward by convective motions. As a result, the Jovian meteorology, still based on Halley-type cells, seems to be much more complex than a simple zone-belt system. The nature of the GRS, a giant anticyclonic storm, colder and higher than its environment, has been confirmed by the Galileo observations, but its internal structure appears to be very complex.

Strong winds, probably driven by the Jovian internal source, were measured at deep tropospheric levels. The troposphere might be statically stable at pressures higher than 18 bars, but the extent of this putative radiative layer is still unknown.

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Solar System Essay for Students and Children

500+ words essay on solar system.

Our solar system consists of eight planets that revolve around the Sun, which is central to our solar system . These planets have broadly been classified into two categories that are inner planets and outer planets. Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars are called inner planets. The inner planets are closer to the Sun and they are smaller in size as compared to the outer planets. These are also referred to as the Terrestrial planets. And the other four Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune are termed as the outer planets. These four are massive in size and are often referred to as Giant planets.

The smallest planet in our solar system is Mercury, which is also closest to the Sun. The geological features of Mercury consist of lobed ridges and impact craters. Being closest to the Sun the Mercury’s temperature sores extremely high during the day time. Mercury can go as high as 450 degree Celsius but surprisingly the nights here are freezing cold. Mercury has a diameter of 4,878 km and Mercury does not have any natural satellite like Earth.

Venus is also said to be the hottest planet of our solar system. It has a toxic atmosphere that always traps heat. Venus is also the brightest planet and it is visible to the naked eye. Venus has a thick silicate layer around an iron core which is also similar to that of Earth. Astronomers have seen traces of internal geological activity on Venus planet. Venus has a diameter of 12,104 km and it is just like Mars. Venus also does not have any natural satellite like Earth.

Earth is the largest inner planet. It is covered two-third with water. Earth is the only planet in our solar system where life is possible. Earth’s atmosphere which is rich in nitrogen and oxygen makes it fit for the survival of various species of flora and fauna. However human activities are negatively impacting its atmosphere. Earth has a diameter of 12,760 km and Earth has one natural satellite that is the moon.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun and it is often referred to as the Red Planet. This planet has a reddish appeal because of the iron oxide present on this planet. Mars planet is a cold planet and it has geological features similar to that of Earth. This is the only reason why it has captured the interest of astronomers like no other planet. This planet has traces of frozen ice caps and it has been found on the planet. Mars has a diameter of 6,787 km and it has two natural satellites.

It is the largest planet in our solar system. Jupiter has a strong magnetic field . Jupiter largely consists of helium and hydrogen. It has a Great Red Spot and cloud bands. The giant storm is believed to have raged here for hundreds of years. Jupiter has a diameter of 139,822 km and it has as many as 79 natural satellites which are much more than of Earth and Mars.

Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun. It is also known for its ring system and these rings are made of tiny particles of ice and rock. Saturn’s atmosphere is quite like that of Jupiter because it is also largely composed of hydrogen and helium. Saturn has a diameter of 120,500 km and It has 62 natural satellites that are mainly composed of ice. As compare with Jupiter it has less satellite.

Uranus is the seventh planet from the Sun. It is the lightest of all the giant and outer planets. Presence of Methane in the atmosphere this Uranus planet has a blue tint. Uranus core is colder than the other giant planets and the planet orbits on its side. Uranus has a diameter of 51,120 km and it has 27 natural satellites.

Neptune is the last planet in our solar system. It is also the coldest of all the planets. Neptune is around the same size as the Uranus. And it is much more massive and dense. Neptune’s atmosphere is composed of helium, hydrogen, methane, and ammonia and it experiences extremely strong winds. It is the only planet in our solar system which is found by mathematical prediction. Neptune has a diameter of 49,530 km and it has 14 natural satellites which are more than of Earth and Mars.

Scientists and astronomers have been studying our solar system for centuries and then after they will findings are quite interesting. Various planets that form a part of our solar system have their own unique geological features and all are different from each other in several ways.

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Why there may be oceans inside dwarf planets beyond Pluto – and what this means for the likely abundance of life

Professor of Planetary Geosciences, The Open University

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David Rothery is co-leader of the European Space Agency's Mercury Surface and Composition Working Group, and a Co-Investigator on MIXS (Mercury Imaging X-ray Spectrometer) that is now on its way to Mercury on board the European Space Agency's Mercury orbiter BepiColombo. He has received funding from the UK Space Agency and the Science & Technology Facilities Council for work related to Mercury and BepiColombo, and from the European Commission under its Horizon 2020 programme for work on planetary geological mapping. He is author of Planet Mercury - from Pale Pink Dot to Dynamic World, Moons: A Very Short Introduction and Planets: A Very Short Introduction.

The Open University provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation UK.

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Earth was long thought to be the only planet in our Solar System with an ocean, but it is beginning to look as though there are underground oceans inside even the most surprising icy bodies.

In fact, icy moons and dwarf planets in the outer Solar System appear to have liquid oceans below layers of thick ice. Recent research suggests there could even be oceans inside bodies beyond Pluto . That is surprising, as these bodies have surface temperatures way below -200°C.

Seventy years ago, it seemed plausible that Venus’s steamy atmosphere was hiding a global ocean from our view. This idea was scuppered in 1962 when the spacecraft Mariner 2 flew past Venus and found that its surface is too hot for liquid water.

It wasn’t long before we realised that any oceans that may once have been on Venus and also Mars vanished billions of years ago due to major changes in their climates.

Tidal heating

The revolution in thinking that paved the way for our new view of the Solar System’s oceans can be traced back to a 1979 paper by astrophysicist Stan Peale. This predicted that Jupiter’s innermost large moon, Io, would be so hot inside that it could be volcanically active.

The heat source that makes this possible is a gravitational effect – a repeated tidal tug between Io and the next moon out from Jupiter, Europa. Europa completes exactly one orbit for Io’s two. Io therefore overtakes Europa after every two orbits, receiving a regularly repeated tidal tug from Europa that prevents Io’s orbit from becoming circular.

This mans that Io’s distance from Jupiter is continually changing, and therefore so does the strength of the much stronger tidal force from Jupiter, which actually distorts Io’s shape.

Repeated tidal distortion of its interior warms Io by internal friction, in the same way that if you bend a stiff wire to and fro several times and then touch the newly bent part to your lip (try it with a coat hanger or a paper clip), you will be able to feel the warmth.

Peale’s prediction of tidal heating was vindicated only a week after publication when Voyager-1 , the the first sophisticated flyby of Jupiter, sent back images of volcanoes erupting on Io.

Io is a rocky world, with no water in any form, so this may seem to have nothing to do with oceans. However, the Jupiter-Io-Europa tidal tug works both ways. Europa is tidally heated as well, not just by Io, but also by the next moon out, Ganymede.

There is now very good evidence that between Europa’s icy shell and its rocky interior, there is a 100km-deep ocean. Ganymede may have as many as three or four liquid layers, sandwiched between layers of ice. In these cases, the heat that prevents the liquid water from freezing is probably mostly tidal in origin.

There is also evidence of a salty liquid water zone within Callisto, Jupiter’s outermost large moon. This isn’t likely to be due to tidal heating but instead possibly down to heat given off by decay of radioactive elements.

Saturn has a relatively small (504km radius) icy moon called Enceladus, which has an internal ocean thanks to tidal heating from interaction with the larger moon called Dione. We are absolutely certain that this ocean exists because Enceladus’s icy shell wobbles in a way that is possible only because this shell is not fixed to the solid interior.

Moreover, water and trace components from this internal ocean were sampled by the Cassini spacecraft . Its measurements suggested Enceladus’s ocean water must have reacted with warm rock below the ocean floor, and that the chemistry down there looks suitable for supporting microbial life.

Other oceans

Puzzlingly, even for moons that should have no tidal heating, and for bodies that aren’t moons at all, evidence for internal oceans keeps mounting up. The list of worlds that may have, or may once have had, internal oceans includes several moons of Uranus , such as Ariel, Triton , the largest moon of Neptune, and Pluto ,

The closest internal ocean to the Sun may be inside the dwarf planet Ceres , though that is perhaps largely frozen by now, or may just consist of salty sludge.

Particularly amazing to me is indications of ocean worlds way beyond Pluto. These come from recently published results from the James Webb Space Telescope looking at the ratios of various isotopes (atoms that have more or fewer particles called neutrons in their nucleus) in the frozen methane that coats Eris and Makemake, two dwarf planets a little smaller and considerably more remote than Pluto.

The authors claim their observations are evidence of chemical reactions between internal ocean water and the ocean floor rock, and also of fairly young, possibly even present day, plumes of water. The authors suggest that heat from the decay of radioactive elements in the rock is sufficient to explain how these internal oceans have been kept warm enough to avoid freezing.

You might wonder whether all this could boost our chances of finding alien life. It grieves me to spoil the party, but there were several papers at this year’s Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston (March 11-15) reporting that the rock below the floor of Europa’s ocean must be too strong for faults to crack it apart to create the sort of hot springs (hydrothermal vents) on its ocean floor that fed microbial life on the early Earth.

It is possible that other underground oceans could be similarly inhospitable. But so far, there’s still hope.

Read more: An element essential to life discovered on one of Saturn's moons, raising hopes of finding alien microbes

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• Extraterrestrials

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Why there may be oceans inside dwarf planets beyond Pluto—and what this means for the likely abundance of life

by David Rothery, The Conversation

Earth was long thought to be the only planet in our solar system with an ocean, but it is beginning to look as though there are underground oceans inside even the most surprising icy bodies.

In fact, icy moons and dwarf planets in the outer solar system appear to have liquid oceans below layers of thick ice. Recent research suggests there could even be oceans inside bodies beyond Pluto . That is surprising, as these bodies have surface temperatures way below -200°C.

Seventy years ago, it seemed plausible that Venus's steamy atmosphere was hiding a global ocean from our view. This idea was scuppered in 1962 when the spacecraft Mariner 2 flew past Venus and found that its surface is too hot for liquid water.

It wasn't long before we realized that any oceans that may once have been on Venus and also Mars vanished billions of years ago due to major changes in their climates.

Tidal heating

The revolution in thinking that paved the way for our new view of the solar system's oceans can be traced back to a 1979 paper by astrophysicist Stan Peale. This predicted that Jupiter's innermost large moon, Io, would be so hot inside that it could be volcanically active.

The heat source that makes this possible is a gravitational effect—a repeated tidal tug between Io and the next moon out from Jupiter, Europa. Europa completes exactly one orbit for Io's two. Io therefore overtakes Europa after every two orbits, receiving a regularly repeated tidal tug from Europa that prevents Io's orbit from becoming circular.

This mans that Io's distance from Jupiter is continually changing, and therefore so does the strength of the much stronger tidal force from Jupiter, which actually distorts Io's shape.

Repeated tidal distortion of its interior warms Io by internal friction, in the same way that if you bend a stiff wire to and fro several times and then touch the newly bent part to your lip (try it with a coat hanger or a paper clip), you will be able to feel the warmth.

Peale's prediction of tidal heating was vindicated only a week after publication when Voyager-1 , the the first sophisticated flyby of Jupiter, sent back images of volcanoes erupting on Io.

Io is a rocky world, with no water in any form, so this may seem to have nothing to do with oceans. However, the Jupiter-Io-Europa tidal tug works both ways. Europa is tidally heated as well, not just by Io, but also by the next moon out, Ganymede.

There is now very good evidence that between Europa's icy shell and its rocky interior, there is a 100km-deep ocean. Ganymede may have as many as three or four liquid layers, sandwiched between layers of ice. In these cases, the heat that prevents the liquid water from freezing is probably mostly tidal in origin.

There is also evidence of a salty liquid water zone within Callisto, Jupiter's outermost large moon. This isn't likely to be due to tidal heating but instead possibly down to heat given off by decay of radioactive elements.

Saturn has a relatively small (504km radius) icy moon called Enceladus, which has an internal ocean thanks to tidal heating from interaction with the larger moon called Dione. We are absolutely certain that this ocean exists because Enceladus's icy shell wobbles in a way that is possible only because this shell is not fixed to the solid interior.

Moreover, water and trace components from this internal ocean were sampled by the Cassini spacecraft. Its measurements suggested Enceladus's ocean water must have reacted with warm rock below the ocean floor, and that the chemistry down there looks suitable for supporting microbial life .

Other oceans

Puzzlingly, even for moons that should have no tidal heating, and for bodies that aren't moons at all, evidence for internal oceans keeps mounting up. The list of worlds that may have, or may once have had, internal oceans includes several moons of Uranus , such as Ariel, Triton , the largest moon of Neptune, and Pluto,

The closest internal ocean to the sun may be inside the dwarf planet Ceres , though that is perhaps largely frozen by now, or may just consist of salty sludge.

Particularly amazing to me is indications of ocean worlds way beyond Pluto. These come from recently published results from the James Webb Space Telescope looking at the ratios of various isotopes (atoms that have more or fewer particles called neutrons in their nucleus) in the frozen methane that coats Eris and Makemake, two dwarf planets a little smaller and considerably more remote than Pluto.

The authors claim their observations are evidence of chemical reactions between internal ocean water and the ocean floor rock and also of fairly young, possibly even present-day, plumes of water. The authors suggest that heat from the decay of radioactive elements in the rock is sufficient to explain how these internal oceans have been kept warm enough to avoid freezing.

You might wonder whether all this could boost our chances of finding alien life. It grieves me to spoil the party, but there were several papers at this year's Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston (March 11-15) reporting that the rock below the floor of Europa's ocean must be too strong for faults to crack it apart to create the sort of hot springs ( hydrothermal vents ) on its ocean floor that fed microbial life on the early Earth.

It is possible that other underground oceans could be similarly inhospitable. But so far, there's still hope.

Provided by The Conversation

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The cosmic truth that gets revealed during a total solar eclipse

Totality or bust. That’s the attitude of the serious eclipse aficionado.

If that means gassing up the car and driving hours and hours to the middle of nowhere to find a patch of clear sky along the “path of totality,” so be it. A partial solar eclipse, even one with the sun 99 percent obscured, won’t incite the same intensity of awe, wonder, shock or — for some — the irrepressible desire to scream .

The writer Annie Dillard , in a famous 1982 essay in the Atlantic, perceived in an eclipse a mind-blowing derangement of human existence, with intimations of the end of the world.

“Seeing a partial eclipse bears the same relation to seeing a total eclipse as kissing a man does to marrying him, or as flying in an airplane does to falling out of an airplane,” Dillard wrote.

Totality’s power comes from how strange it is, how unlike anything else. This entirely natural event has a supernatural vibe.

When the moon fully blocks the sun, darkness descends with stunning swiftness. The air temperature plummets. Birds and insects might start acting strangely . And in place of the normally incandescent sun, you see only a black disk surrounded by a glowing, shimmering, entrancing ring of light. It’s the corona — the sun’s atmosphere.

Seeing the corona is rare enough . But look around, and you’ll also notice the eclipsed sun surrounded by bright stars and planets. For the April 8 eclipse, Venus and Jupiter will bracket the sun, and Mars and Saturn may be faintly visible, according to NASA.

The sun and the stars and the planets do not, under normal circumstances, share the same sky. You could say the sun is diurnal, the stars nocturnal.

It is only during totality that the eclipse reveals a simple if profound truth: The sun lives among the stars, and the planets live with the sun. The five planets that may be visible on April 8 — counting the planet at your feet — will be lined up, along with the sun and moon, on the ecliptic of the solar system.

These are the kinds of ho-hum facts we learn in elementary school but that become gasp inducing during totality.

“We can literally see our place in the universe,” NASA astrophysicist Michael Kirk said.

“At totality, when you look at the sun, you actually realize that it is a star,” said Nicola “Nicky” Fox, the top science administrator at NASA. “It looks more like it’s a living, breathing thing rather than just a bright light.”

A ‘mind-blowing’ experience

Totality has the paradoxical quality of hiding the sun but also revealing its nature — what it is, what it’s made of, how it works.

Copernicus explained the motion of the planets in a heliocentric solar system in 1543, but nearly a century later, the idea that Earth is not the center of Creation was still getting Galileo in deep trouble.

Not until the second half of the 19th century did scientists have evidence that the sun is the same thing as the stars of the night sky. The breakthrough came through spectroscopy, the technique of analyzing wavelengths of light for the signatures of different elements. It took decades more for anyone to understand how the sun works. That mystery was entangled with the greatest unknown of all: the age of the sun.

Right up to the 20th century, some scientists estimated that the sun and Earth might be only a few tens of millions of years old. But Charles Darwin’s most famous theory , critics were quick to point out, required a very old Earth in which life could slowly evolve into a great diversity of forms.

British mathematician William Thomson, known as Lord Kelvin, argued for a much younger sun, based on calculations that assumed the sun produced energy through gravitational interactions as matter fell toward the core. The debate was resolved only with the development of atomic physics.

During an 1868 eclipse in India, French astronomer Pierre Jules Janssen detected a previously unknown element in the atmosphere of the sun using spectroscopy. English astronomer Joseph Norman Lockyer independently confirmed the discovery and gave the element its name: helium.

Now we know that hydrogen atoms fuse into helium atoms in the sun’s core. This reaction converts a small percentage of mass into energy in a process that is extremely efficient, fitting neatly with estimates that the solar system is a whopping 4.6 billion years old. The energy migrates outward from the core and eventually reaches Earth, making life possible.

Many other types of stars burn hydrogen as fuel. But our sun is a mature, relatively calm, reliable star. Look around the universe, and you will see a lot of stars that are comparatively unfriendly. They explode in their youth or spew radiation promiscuously. Red dwarf stars, the most common kind in our galaxy, are capable of blowing away the atmospheres of nearby planets.

“Different stars burn at different rates, liberating their free energy over millions to trillions of years,” physicist Michael Turner said in an email. “Long-lived stars like our sun do so over billions of years, making a rich biological evolution possible.”

The total solar eclipse on April 8 will be unusually convenient for Americans who want to witness this cosmic truth. The Texas-to-Maine path of totality — the narrow ribbon where the moon will cast its shadow — crosses many sizable cities, including Dallas, Indianapolis, Cleveland, Buffalo and Rochester.

According to NASA, about 31 million people in the United States don’t have to go far from home to experience totality. They just have to look up .

“Even though intellectually you know what it’s going to look like,” NASA’s Fox said, “it’s just mind-blowing.”

2024 total solar eclipse

There's more to see than total solar eclipse: Baily's Beads, 2 planets, Orion, and a comet

On Monday, April 8, 2024, everyone within the contiguous United States could potentially see a solar eclipse at some level. Partial eclipses, spanning from 20% in the Pacific Northwest to 50% in the Southeast, are within the Moon’s outer shadow (penumbra). For those along the Moon’s inner shadow (umbra), i.e. the path of totality, a multisensory experience awaits.

A total solar eclipse requires a precise alignment when the moon passes directly between the sun and the Earth as well as a cosmic coincidence: the sun is 400 times greater in diameter than the moon, but the moon is 400 times closer. Hence, they both appear to be the same angular size in the sky when viewed from Earth.

If the plane of the moon’s orbit around the Earth was perfectly aligned with the plane of Earth’s orbit around the sun, and the shape of the moon’s orbit was circular, then we would experience a total solar eclipse every 29½ days of the lunar cycle during the new moon phase. However, the orbit of the moon around the Earth is elliptical, which modulates its angular size, and the orbital planes of the moon and Earth are offset, which means the moon’s shadow is not always projected onto Earth.

The moon’s umbra will pass though the U.S. from Texas through Ohio and onto Maine in just over an hour, moving at nearly three times the speed of sound via a path that spans roughly 2,000 miles long and 115 miles wide, treating some 32 million people to a totality lasting up to 4.5 minutes. These metrics are twice those associated with the total solar eclipse of 2017, due to the moon’s closer proximity. You can get the details for your location at go.nasa.gov/EclipseExplorer . Unfortunately, neither Newark nor Columbus are not in the path of totality.

Safe viewing requires using ISO 12312-2 compliant solar eclipse glasses, which must be worn at all times – except during totality, when they can be removed to observe the Sun’s outer atmosphere (corona). Be advised that eclipse glasses won’t protect your eyes from solar observations under the magnification of a telescope or binoculars. Such optical devices must either be specifically designed for solar observations or fitted with appropriate solar filters. Avoid permanently damaging your vision by reviewing the safety information at: https://eclipse.aas.org/eye-safety/viewers-filters .

Leading up to and immediately after eclipse totality, look for Baily’s Beads and the diamond ring effect caused by the last set of sunrays piercing through the irregular topology of the moon’s edges. Contrary to 2017, the sunspot cycle is currently approaching its maximum, which means there will be greater solar activity in the form of prominences and flares along the sun’s edges, as viewed safely under solar filtered magnification.

During totality, look for the planets Jupiter and Venus, Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks, and the Orion Constellation as daylight gives way to the darkness of the eclipse. Environmental effects of totality on nocturnal wildlife behavior and drops in temperature are also commonplace.

You can participate in eclipse-related citizen science initiatives at go.nasa.gov/DoEclipseScience . Lastly, if your local weather precludes direct observation, consider live stream options via NASA+ and NASA TV.

Dr. Michael Stamatikos

Associate Professor of Physics & Astronomy, Ohio State University

Astrophysicist, NASA Goddard Space Center

Owner & President, STEM Solutions LLC

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The Team Effort Behind One of Classical Music’s Greatest Hits

Gustav Holst composed “The Planets” with crucial help from others. Firsthand accounts and the score reflect how collaborative its creation was.

The New York Philharmonic, conducted by Bramwell Tovey, performing Holst’s “The Planets” in 2013. Credit... Ruby Washington/The New York Times

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By Hugh Morris

Reporting from London

• Published March 29, 2024 Updated April 1, 2024

In 1916, the composer Gustav Holst took a young conductor, Adrian Boult, on a long walk through Kew Gardens and Richmond Park in London. A few years earlier, Boult had written to Holst asking whether he had composed any music for small orchestra that he could perform. On this day, though, they discussed a much grander prospect: a suite for large orchestra that would become “The Planets.”

Holst arranged for Boult to hear a version of the piece at the piano, played by two of his colleagues, Vally Lasker and Nora Day. Few were better equipped than they were to introduce Boult to the score; as rehearsal pianists, amanuenses, copyists and performers, the two would be intimately involved in the creation of “The Planets,” one of the most popular orchestral pieces of the 20th century.

Documents from Lasker’s archive at the Royal College of Music in London show that this way of introducing “The Planets” to other artists wasn’t so unusual in its genesis. In an introduction to the piece given by Lasker on BBC radio in 1951, she said, “We had the great joy of introducing the work to all the great conductors in this country, and, after the war, to many of the great continental conductors.”

Karl Straube, Paul von Klenau and Wilhelm Furtwängler were among the international figures who heard early versions of “The Planets” played by Lasker and Day. The pair also helped Boult get up to speed as he agreed at short notice to conduct the work’s premiere to selected guests in 1918. (Six decades later, Boult would make his fifth and final recording of “The Planets.”)

In January 1920, Lasker and Day played “The Planets” for Ralph Vaughan Williams, Holst’s friend and close musical associate, and by the time the work received its full public premiere later that year, by Albert Coates and the London Symphony Orchestra, the music already had many important admirers.

As the world of classical music observes the 150th anniversary of Holst’s birth this year, “The Planets” bears revisiting. If there’s a single work that dominates our understanding of him, it’s this colorful, exciting, slightly eccentric orchestral suite.

It originally had the working title Seven Pieces for Large Orchestra, which the Holst biographer Michael Short links to Arnold Schoenberg’s color-driven Five Pieces for Orchestra. The planetary titles came later. But, as Lasker noted, they were derived not from mythology, but from astrology, which Holst had been introduced to in 1913, on a visit to the Spanish island of Mallorca, with the writer Clifford Bax and his composer brother, Arnold. Each movement describes a planet’s astrological character: “Mars” is the bringer of war; “Neptune,” the mystic; “Saturn,” the bringer of old age.

“The Planets” has grown only more popular with time, on a journey from orchestral programming staple (featured at the BBC Proms 88 times since its first performance there in 1921) to cultural touchstone (influencing composers like John Williams whose “Star Wars” soundtrack bears its mark) to civic emblem in Britain.

Cecil Spring Rice, the British diplomat and poet, added a lyric to the slow theme from “Jupiter”; the result, “ I Vow to Thee My Country ,” became a stirring national hymn to rival Hubert Parry’s “Jerusalem” or Edward Elgar’s “Land of Hope and Glory,” and was featured at the funerals of Winston Churchill, Diana, Princess of Wales, and Margaret Thatcher. The melody took on another life, beyond Britain’s borders, with a new lyric for the 1991 Rugby World Cup song “ World in Union .”

“The Planets” was composed and orchestrated between 1914 and 1917, and was first performed for the public in 1920. During that six-year period, he relied heavily on a group of supportive women whom he later referred to in the dedication to his opera “At the Boar’s Head” as “my scribes.”

HOLST WAS A BUSY MUSICIAN when he began to think about “The Planets.” In addition to composing, he juggled work at three different institutions: Morley College, James Allen’s Girls’ School and St. Paul’s Girls’ School. He formed a strong attachment to those places, and his catalog reflects that, in pieces like “Brook Green Suite,” written for St. Paul’s junior orchestra while he was hospitalized toward the end of his life and titled after the school’s location in Brook Green, Hammersmith.

His activities were complicated by lifelong bad health. In particular, Holst had suffered since childhood from neuritis in his hands, first affecting his ability to play the piano — he later opted for the trombone — and later making him struggle with the more laborious aspects of composing. Those included copying, part-writing and orchestration, tasks that, in a time before digital engraving or photocopying, required “a huge amount of physical effort, and that took an awful lot of time,” the music historian Leah Broad said in an interview.

Despite health complications, Holst gained a reputation as an enthusiastic multitasker, with a passion for large, ambitious performances. In 1911, while he was the music director at Morley College, he headed up large revivals of Henry Purcell’s music, with works like “King Arthur,” “Dioclesian” and “The Fairy Queen” being heard for the first time in hundreds of years.

Holst did find a solution to his competing ambition and physical incapability, and he left traces of it on the cover of the 1911 “Fairy Queen” program, which lists 28 copyists who worked for 18 months to copy some 1,500 pages of parts. “The Planets” was similarly bold, especially as a project undertaken during wartime. His pupil Jane Joseph commented that he “resigned himself to needing a vast orchestra which no one would be able to afford in wartime.”

To help with the preparation of “The Planets,” Holst enlisted Joseph, as well as Lasker and Day, who were both music teachers at St. Paul’s, to act as his amanuenses. Because the neuritis affected his writing hand in particular, Holst once described the women as his “three right hands”; Imogen Holst, the composer’s daughter, described their role in completing the 198 pages of the full score as “invaluable.”

There was no free time during the school week, so the writing of “The Planets” took place on weekends, with activity centered around the new, soundproof music room at St. Paul’s. (The space is still used as a music room today, with a placard that says “Mr. Holst’s Room” on the door.) Holst, seated away from the piano, would ask them to try out material, dictate parts of the score, or give orchestrational directions.

Some idea of what that environment was like can be found in a memoir that Lasker wrote for the school magazine, Paulina, in 1960:

He had his piano sketch, and with red ink, he wrote against each note which instrument played it. In another room, Jane Joseph, one of his pupils, worked on a different part of the score. As soon as she and Nora Day had done four pages — we were all working in the same building — they brought them to me in another room and I transcribed it for the piano. In six weeks we had done the whole lot. We all worked eight hours a day and I can’t imagine any other composer working in this way without any worry or loss of temper.

Sections of the “Planets” manuscript are available online via the Royal College of Music’s archives , and they clearly show a similar collaborative process in action. Written on the two-piano score in red ink are Holst’s instructions for orchestration; elsewhere, there are large sections crossed out, and notes in margins about whose handwriting is whose, and where that changes.

In 2009, the Holst scholar Alan Gibbs compiled a list of all of Lasker’s arrangements, for Holst and others. Included are multiple arrangements of “The Planets,” vocal scores of Holst’s operas “The Perfect Fool” and “At the Boar’s Head,” and amanuensis work on his “Japanese Suite.” There are also details of the similar relationship Lasker and Day had with Ralph Vaughan Williams, with arrangements for piano of his “London,” “Pastoral” and Fourth Symphonies, as well as his ballet “Job” and his Piano Concerto. These were made for a variety of purposes: rehearsals, demonstrations, performances, as a sounding board for ideas, as a way to persuade conductors and programmers to champion the work.

“We have very strong conceptual models for thinking about solo authorship and solo genius — this kind of outpouring of genius, from one person, from their perspective,” said Broad, the historian, adding that “we don’t have as developed a way of thinking about collaborative creativity.”

In the case of Holst, there never seemed to be any doubt in the group about the identity of the “Planets” creator, nor about the composer’s appreciation for those he worked with. He later dedicated pieces to Lasker, Day, and Joseph, who wrote that Holst “is indisputably master, and no less indisputably comrade.”

But perhaps this might be reflected better in our understanding of “The Planets,” given how famous it is. On the exterior of St. Paul’s there is a blue plaque issued by English Heritage. It reads: “Gustav Holst (1874-1934) wrote ‘The Planets’ and taught here.” To that, we might now add “with help.”

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