Jupiter has a long history surprising the men of the earth, and these surprises go all the way back to 1610 when Galileo Galilei found the first moons beyond Earth. That discovery changed the way we see the universe. That discovery by astronomer Galileo Galilei, using a new invention called a telescope to look at Jupiter to discover the first moons known to exist beyond Earth. His discovery ended the inaccurate belief that everything orbited the Earth.

Now, there is a spacecraft, which is called NASA′s Juno orbiter which is currently exploring this giant world.

Jupiter is the fifth planet out from the Sun, but is by far, the largest planet in the solar system, and, in fact, has more than twice as mass as all the other planets combined together.

The planet Jupiter is seen as a planet covered with stripes and swirls, these surface ornamentations are actually cold, windy clouds of ammonia and water, floating in an atmosphere of hydrogen and helium. The great red spot on the surface of Jupiter is no more that a giant storm of these gasses that has raged for hundreds of years. This red spot alone is about twice the size of than Earth.

Discovered: Known to the Ancients

Planet Type: Gas Giant

Average Distance from Sun: 485 million miles

Equatorial Diameter: 88,846 miles (142,984 km)

Axil Tilt (to orbit): 3.13°

Inclination to Ecliptic: 1.31°

Length of Day (rotation period): 9 hours 55 minutes (9.93 hours)

Length of Year (orbital period): 11.86 Earth Years or 4333 Earth days

Orbital Eccentricity: `0.048

Surface Gravity (amount times Earth gravity): 2.4

Surface Temperature: -169°Fahrenheit (-110°C)

Moons: 79 confirmed (as of 2018)

Rings: Yes, made of dust.

The largest planet of the solar system, Jupiter has a diameter eleven times the diameter of the Earth and it′s mass id 317 times the mass of the Earth. The mass of Jupiter is 2.5 times greater than all of the rest of the planets combined.

The orbit of Jupiter is about 5.2 times the distance from the sun as it the 485 million miles from the Sun; Earth is about 93 million miles from the Sun.

The atmosphere of Jupiter is made up of hydrogen and helium. Jupiter is a gas giant which lacks the surface that is here on the Earth. If Jupiter did have an inner core, it is likely that it is about the size of the earth.

Aspect relation to Jupiter are called Jovian. Despite the large sise of Jupiter, it has the shortest day of all the other planets; a Jovial day is about ten hours. The time for the planet to rotate on it′s axis. A Jovian year is about twelve times the Earth year, or 4333 earth days.

Jupiter has about 75 or more moons, the largest being the Galilein Moons: Callisto, Io, Europa, and Ganymede.

In 1962, the intense gravity of Jupiter was used to hurl spacecraft into the farthest regions of the solar system. Prior to that, the rockets we use to leave Earth were not powerful enough to hurl a spacecraft into the outer solar system and beyond. Since employing Jupiter to aid to the outward bound spacecraft, these mechanical explorers have been traveling farther and faster since.

Nine spacecraft have visited the planet Jupiter, seven of which have flew by and two that have orbited the gas giant, the latest being the Juno spacecraft now in orbit.

Pioneer 10 was the first fly by spacecraft. It was followed by Pioneer 11, Voyager 1, and Voyager 2 all of which were flybys.

One of Voyager spacecraft discovered the faint ring system of Jupiter. In fact, all four giant planets in our solar system, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune have ring systems. The rings of Jupiter are very faint and made of dust, not ice.

Galileo spacecraft was the first spacecraft to orbit Jupiter and to send an atmospheric probe into the surface clouds.

The international Ulysses mission used the gravity of Jupiter to hurl itself into orbital passes of the northern and southern poles of the Sun.

After studying Jupiter, the Cassini spacecraft also used the gravity of Jupiter to hurl itself to Saturn to this planet.

The spacecraft New Horizons was next to study Jupiter and then hurl itself further out to study Pluto and the Kuiper Belt.

Two additional missions are being planned to study the moons of Jupiter, the spacecraft Europa Clipper and the spacecraft JUICE (Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer)

Jupiter controls the largest number of moons of any planet with the 2020 current total being at 79 moons. The four largest are the Galilean moons know as :

Io-Jupiter 1, Europa-Jupiter 2, Ganymede-Jupiter 3 and Callisto-Jupiter 4.

When the sun sets, I get my camera out and sit down on a chair at the end of the driveway awaiting the moon to rise. Soon, I see a slight glow above the horizon and think, Right on time! I take some nice photos of the Harvest Moon rising and of Jupiter which I should have posted in a couple of days.

During the entire year of December 2020, shortly after the sun set each night, I had been noticing that Jupiter and Saturn were slowly closing in on one another. At first, I gave it no thought but about the first few days in December, I began to hear reports about an upcoming Great Conjunction. This peaked my curiosity and I began watching it regularly. However, when ever I tried to photograph the planets, the lighting was never right, still, each time I tried, I would become a little more adept at using my camera with difficult lighting conditions. Later, I have been able to take a photographs with a few being some what decent but not many. Then, by December I have been able to take more and more photos both at the twilight horizon and also zoom in photos of the celestial objects with much better results and spend several two or three day stays at Falcon to photograph the Great Conjuction.

Finally, on 19 December, I come back to Falcon and pay for a three day stay so that I can take photos each night. On Saturday night and Sunday night I take numerous photos and then of the night of the Great Conjunction, Sunday, 21 December 2020, the entire sky is full of clouds and there is not conjunction to be seen. C'est la vie!

Nevertheless, I was able to take photos the two nights before the Great Conjunction and on the night of 20 December, the two planets were so very close. The following are some of my photos taken of this celestial event.

Saturn is at the top of this photo and Jupiter is below. Around Jupiter in a line from upper left in order, Ganymede and Europa, then to the lower right, Io and Calisto.

Saturn is at the top of this photo and Jupiter is below. Look just above Jupiter and a little to the left for Io and Europa.

In the next two photos, all four Galilean moons are visible.

After changing the lens setting, I take another photo and here, all four moons show up again.

What I have learned about Jupiter is that the four moons that were visible to me when I photographed them are known as the Galilean moons. The first observation of the moon called Io was by Galileo Galilei in 1609 and he had also sighted all four of these Jupiter moons by 1610. These four moons (in the order of increasing [closest to furthest] distance from Jupiter) are: Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto.

Today, there are seventy-nine known moons orbiting Jupiter. To sight the four massive moon of Jupiter, Galileo used a 30x magnification telescope; my camera has a 60x magnification zoom. I can only wonder what it was like back in his day.

While taking photos of the Full Strawberry Moon, I noticed a planet just two hands down and one hand to the left. I zoomed in on the planet to find it to be Jupiter and began taking photos immediately.

However, as it has been in past experiences of planet photography without a tripod, the first several photos were just long streaks of light and totally out of focus. I then found a spot on the jammer to set the camera upon and tried taking another photograph. Galileo would have been proud.

From left to right the moons are: Callisto, Io, Europa and Ganymede (largest).

In July of 2017, while camped at Pioneer Park in Hot Sulphur Springs, Colorado, I zoomed in on Jupiter with my camera and was able to see clearly for the first time the four large moons of this planet. However, when I snapped the photo, it was less than clear but I still kept and published these photos simply because these were the first ever I have taken of Jupiter and it′s moons.

From left to right the moons are Ganymede (largest), Io, Europa and Callisto.