Jupiter, Jupiter, Everything is Jupiter!

This month is June and there is a lot going on with the planet Jupiter, the second largest known body in our entire Solar System. Jupiter is a gas giant planet made up of primarily hydrogen, helium, ammonia, and trace amounts methane and oxygen. Jupiter is entirely made up volatile gas and if a manned human mission was sent there, there would be no solid surface to land on. Deadly radiation bands also surround the orbit of Jupiter and its moon's making a manned mission there nearly impossible.

Jupiter, although huge, is not nearly the largest gas giant planet in our stellar neighborhood, let alone entire galaxy. There are many bigger gas giants, such as TrES-4b and WASP-12b, which are about 70% larger than Jupiter itself. These planets don't orbit in the cold gloom beyond the star's habitable zone like Jupiter, but intensely close, so much that they are rapidly shrinking from mass gas loss. These scorching gas balls are called "hot jupiters."

An artist's impression of a massive hot jupiter gas giant

Recently this June, the ESO's La Silla Observatory in Chile discovered that more than 5% of the suns in the star cluster Messier 67, had extrasolar gas giants orbiting them, most hot jupiters. So far nearly 2,000 extrasolar planets have been discovered outside of our solar system, again most are hot jupiters. However quite a few Earth-like planets have been discovered, most orbiting red dwarf stars. There could even be habitable moons of gas giants orbiting in the goldilocks zone of a solar system.

Could small extrasolar planets or the moons of gas giants potentially be habitable 

However why June, 2016 is really such an important month for our friend Jupiter is because the ESA-NASA spacecraft Juno is set to arrive at the planet later this month. It will spend a good deal of time observing and measuring the lower atmosphere of the planet and its mantle of liquid hydrogen, while also giving us eye candy in the form of photographs of Jupiter and the four Gallilean moons hopefully. This mission will may teach us about the largest planet in our solar neighborhood and possibly the formation of our solar system and our small blue world.

The Juno Spacecraft is set to arrive at Jupiter this month.