Jupiter

Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and by far the largest. Jupiter is more than twice as massive as all the other planets

combined (318 times Earth).

orbit: 778,330,000 km (5.20 AU) from Sun

diameter: 142,984 km (equatorial)

mass: 1.900e27 kg

Jupiter (a.k.a. Jove; Greek Zeus) was the King of the Gods, the ruler of Olympus and the patron of the Roman state. Zeus was the son of Cronus (Saturn). Jupiter is the fourth brightest object in the sky (after the Sun, the Moon and Venus; at some times Mars is also brighter). It has been known since prehistoric times. Galileo's discovery, in 1610, of Jupiter's four large moons Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto (now known as the Galilean moons) was the first discovery of a center of motion not apparently centered on the Earth. It was a major point in favor of Copernicus's heliocentric theory of the motions of the planets; Galileo's outspoken support of the Copernican theory got him in trouble with the Inquisition.

Jupiter is about 90% hydrogen and 10% helium (by numbers of atoms, 75/25% by mass) with traces of

methane, water, ammonia and "rock". This is very close to the composition of the primordial Solar Nebula from

which the entire solar system was formed. Saturn has a similar composition, but Uranus and Neptune have much

less hydrogen and helium.

(Information pasted from http://www.seds.org/nineplanets/nineplanets/jupiter.html using google for search.)

Are we quite sure it is kosher to put this page here?

http://www.seds.org/billa/offerings.html#copyright

I'm glad you responded! I also see the need to figure out issues like this. And in fact it's the reason I posted the link I took the information from as well. - It's just so easy to just copy and paste some information from the web.. In this case I think we could simply email the copyright holder and ask for his permission. - anyway: do we have some kind of discussion forum around here? (being new to this site...)

Yep, see WikipediaL. And yep, please e-mail the author. He says he wants copies intact, and this copy is available for anyone to edit here.