Table of Contents
What are the most common elements on Jupiter and their physical state?
Jupiter is made up predominantly of hydrogen. The simple, basic gas, a prime ingredient on the sun, accounts for 90 percent of the atmosphere. Nearly 10 percent is composed of helium. A very small fraction of the atmosphere is made up of compounds such as ammonia, sulfur, methane, and water vapor.
What elements make up the planet Jupiter?
Structure. 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.
What are Jupiter’s most important physical features?
The planet is covered in thick red, brown, yellow and white clouds. The clouds make the planet look like it has stripes. One of Jupiter’s most famous features is the Great Red Spot. It is a giant spinning storm, resembling a hurricane.
What are the elements that make up Jupiter?
Spectral analysis of Jupiter has revealed that in addition to hydrogen and helium, the planet is made of water, methane and ammonia. Those elements are in trace amounts.
What makes Jupiter different from other planets in our Solar System?
Jupiter’s chemical composition is vastly different from that of Earth. Being composed largely of hydrogen and helium, with much smaller amounts of heavier elements, Jupiter has more in common with the Sun than with the terrestrial planets in our solar system.
Why is it important to study the atmosphere of Jupiter?
Because the relative abundance of elements heavier than hydrogen and helium within Jupiter provides important clues to the various processes involved with its formation and evolution, a major goal of the current Juno mission is to better constrain the elemental composition of Jupiter’s atmosphere, including the deep oxygen abundance.
Why does Jupiter have stripes on its surface?
Jupiter rotates much faster and has a thicker atmosphere, so its coriolis effect is much stronger, thus the stripes. Try this link for a more in depth explanation of the striations(stripes). Just asking what is Jupiter made of only brings up a whole other set of questions.