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Orbit and rotation

Jupiter travels around the sun in a slightly elliptical (oval-shaped) orbit. The planet completes one orbit in 4,333 Earth days, or almost 12 Earth y...

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Orbit and rotation

Jupiter travels around the sun in a slightly elliptical (oval-shaped) orbit. The planet completes one orbit in 4,333 Earth days, or almost 12 Earth years.

As Jupiter orbits the sun, the planet rotates on its axis, an imaginary line through its center. The axis is tilted about 3¡. Scientists measure tilt relative to a line at a right angle to the orbital plane, an imaginary surface touching all points of the orbit.


Jupiter rotates faster than any other planet. It takes 9 hours 56 minutes to spin around once on its axis, compared with 24 hours for Earth. Scientists cannot measure the rotation of the interior of the giant planet directly, so they have calculated the speed from indirect measurements. They first calculated the speed using an average of the speeds of the visible clouds that move with interior currents, except for a more rapid zone near the equator.

Jupiter sends out radio waves strong enough to be picked up by radio telescopes on Earth. Scientists now measure these waves to calculate Jupiter's rotational speed. The strength of the waves varies under the influence of Jupiter's magnetic field in a pattern that repeats every 9 hours 56 minutes. Because the magnetic field originates in Jupiter's core, this variation shows how fast the plant's interior spins.

Jupiter's rapid rotation makes it bulge at the equator and flatten at the poles. The planet's diameter is about 7 percent larger at the equator than at the poles.

http://www.nasa.gov/worldbook/...