What's under Jupiter's Clouds

This is almost the last IO answer for this school year. We asked Pierre Kerr, to try to answer this for you.

Jupiter is composed mostly of hydrogen and helium. It has no solid surface, only layers of gaseous clouds. At the planet's center is probably a rocky core with more than ten times the mass of the planet Earth. Temperatures in the core may exceed 25,000 K. Surrounding the core is a liquid hydrogen-helium mixture that has been squeezed into metallic form under the intense pressure of the planet's upper layers.

In October 1989 the Galileo spacecraft was sent into orbit for a six-year journey to Jupiter. A probe was set to be released into the Jovian atmosphere in late 1995 to photograph portions of Jupiter over a two-year period.

Here is a National Geographic magazine with some more interesting things about Jupiter. Please enjoy the magazine and keep it, it's yours. If you finish with it, please consider donating to the school library next year.

Have a good summer.

Answer #% % filename Document5 page% % page 1 of% % numpages 1 % % date \@ "MMMM d, yyyy"June 26, 1995