Jupiter is extreme. It's the planet on steroids.

The current count for the number of modes that Jupiter has is 95.

It seems a more familiar planet because we've been able to see it so up close.

Hello and welcome to the Supermassive podcast from the Royal Astronomical Society with me,

science journalist Izzy Clark and astrophysicist Dr Becky Smethurst.

Yeah, this month we're exploring the largest planet in our solar system, Jupiter.

What do we know about this big old planet?

And what are the missions that we'll find out even more?

I mean, it absolutely is the monster of our solar system.

It holds a special place in my heart that I know Becky will disagree with.

Justice for Saturn.

Sorry, sorry, but today it's all about Jupiter, okay, so deal with it.

And obviously, Dr Robert Massey, the deputy director of the Royal Astronomical Society, is here too.

So, Robert, tell us about Jupiter, what's it like as a planet.

You're definitely right that the key word is big, at least by the standards of our solar system.

And for us, that means it's bright as well.

It's reflecting a lot of sunlight.

It's brighter than any star apart from the sun.

And every planet except Venus and just occasionally Mars when it's had it's closest to the Earth.

Now, this planet is 140,000 kilometres across.

So you could fit 1,300 Earths inside it, which always blows my mind a little bit. And it spins so fast in just under 10 hours that it actually bulges out of the equator. And you can see that, even with the peribinoculars, you look at it and you think, oh, it's not round. It's actually slightly bulging out a bit. And with a telescope, it's really obvious. It's mostly hydrogen and helium like our sun, but that's because it's got a strong gravitational field so it can hold onto those lighter gases a lot more easily than planets like the Earth can. And if you were able to stand on it, it doesn't have a solid service. Lots of caveats here, but if you were sort of at the bit, you know, the bit you can see the top of the atmosphere. The gravitational field there would mean you'd weigh two and a half times what you do on Earth. Now, that's not something I in particular would relish. It takes about 12 years to go around the sun and we've just had a really good view of it over the winter and it'll be at its best again in November this year when it'll be really, really high up and bright again from the UK. So something to look forward to towards the end of this year. And I mean, I think that puts it into perspective that it spins in just 10 hours, but just like the size of it. I mean, that would be fast for Earth. Yeah. But then you think about just how big it is and you're like, no, hang on, that's, that's too much. Yeah. Like if you think about it like on a winter night like on earth

like a long just how big it is and you're like no hang on that's that's too much yeah like if you think about it

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