Jupiter (planet)
Magic
Jupiter expands anything it touches. This energy is associated with growth, abundance, optimism, opportunity and good luck, as well as integration into the larger whole (a growth in connection). It is often used to enhance anything from career, home life, to finances and gambling.
Archetypes[edit]
- The Cosmos
- The Wise Counselor
Retrograde Motion[edit]
Due to its larger orbit (it is farther out), Jupiter assumes a retrograde orbit once per year (around every nine months, to be more exact), for a period of four months. Unlike the retrograde period of Mercury, Jupiter's retrograde is more about second chances, and do-overs. It is a time to expand our understanding of why something didn't work, and how we can succeed on our next attempt. As with all retrograde periods, the sign the planet is in at the time it begins to move backward plays significantly in the areas that hold the most opportunity.
Upcoming Jupiter Retrograde Periods[edit]
- September 4 - December 30, 2023 (in Taurus)
- October 9, 2024 - February 4, 2025
- November 11, 2025 - March 10, 2026
Astrology
Jupiter is the traditional ruling planet of Sagittarius and Pisces and it is exalted in Cancer. In classical Roman mythology, Jupiter is the ruler of the gods and their guardian and protector, and his symbol is the thunderbolt. The Romans believed that Jupiter granted them supremacy because they had honored him more than any other people had. Jupiter was "the fount of the auspices upon which the relationship of the city with the gods rested." He personified the divine authority of Rome's highest offices, internal organization, and external relations. His image in the Republican and Imperial Capitol bore regalia associated with Rome's ancient kings and the highest consular and Imperial honours.
In the same way, the planet Jupiter is the king of the other planets, a giant in size with spectacular, brightly colored clouds and intense storms. Some astronomers believe that it plays an important protecting role in using its massive gravity to capture or expel from the solar system many comets and asteroids that would otherwise threaten Earth and the inner planets. Jupiter takes 11.9 years to orbit the Sun, spending almost an earth year (361 days) in each sign of the zodiac. Furthermore, Jupiter is usually the fourth-brightest object in the sky (after the Sun, the Moon and Venus).
In astrology, Jupiter is associated with the principles of growth, expansion, healing, prosperity, good fortune, and miracles. Jupiter governs long distance and foreign travel, big business and wealth, higher education, religion, and the law. It is also associated with the urge for freedom and exploration, as well with gambling and merrymaking.
The 1st-century poet Manilius described Jupiter as temperate and benign, and the greater benefic. It was regarded as warm and moist in nature, and therefore favorable to life. In medicine, Jupiter is associated with the liver, pituitary gland, and the disposition of fats; it governs the sanguine humor. In modern astrology, Jupiter is the primary native ruler of the ninth house, but traditionally, Jupiter was assigned to both the second and ninth houses: the house of values and the house of beliefs, respectively, and had its joy in the second house of good luck.
Jupiter rules over Thursday, and in Romance languages, the name for Thursday often comes from Jupiter (e.g., joi in Romanian, jeudi in French, jueves in Spanish, and giovedì in Italian). Dante Alighieri associated Jupiter with the liberal art of geometry. In Chinese astrology, Jupiter is ruled by the element wood, which is patient, hard-working, and reliable. In Indian astrology, Jupiter is known as Guru or Brihaspati and is known as the 'great teacher'.
Science
[2]Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest in the Solar System. It is a gas giant with a mass more than two and a half times that of all the other planets in the Solar System combined, and slightly less than one one-thousandth the mass of the Sun. Jupiter is the third brightest natural object in the Earth's night sky after the Moon and Venus, and it has been observed since prehistoric times. It was named after Jupiter, the chief deity of ancient Roman religion.
Jupiter is primarily composed of hydrogen, followed by helium, which constitutes a quarter of its mass and a tenth of its volume. The ongoing contraction of Jupiter's interior generates more heat than the planet receives from the Sun. Because of its rapid rotation rate of 1 rotation per 10 hours, the planet's shape is an oblate spheroid: it has a slight but noticeable bulge around the equator. The outer atmosphere is divided into a series of latitudinal bands, with turbulence and storms along their interacting boundaries. A prominent result of this is the Great Red Spot, a giant storm which has been observed since at least 1831.
Jupiter is surrounded by a faint planetary ring system and has a powerful magnetosphere. The planet's magnetic tail is nearly 800 million kilometres (5.3 astronomical units; 500 million miles) long. Jupiter has 95 known moons and probably many more, including the four large moons discovered by Galileo Galilei in 1610: Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto. Ganymede, the largest of the four, is larger than the planet Mercury. Callisto is the second largest; Io and Europa are approximately the size of Earth's moon.
Nomenclature[edit]
In both the ancient Greek and Roman civilizations, Jupiter was named after the chief god of the divine pantheon: Zeus to the Greeks and Jupiter to the Romans. The International Astronomical Union formally adopted the name Jupiter for the planet in 1976, and has since named its newly discovered satellites for the god's lovers, favourites, and descendants. The planetary symbol for Jupiter, ♃, descends from a Greek zeta with a horizontal stroke, ⟨Ƶ⟩, as an abbreviation for Zeus.
In Germanic mythology, Jupiter is equated to Thor, the namesake of Thursday. It has been theorized that this replaced the Latin name for the day, Dies Iovi ('Day of Jupiter'). The Latin name Iovis is associated with the etymology of Zeus ('sky father'). The English equivalent, Jove, is only known to have come into use as a poetic name for the planet around the 14th century.
The original Greek deity Zeus supplies the root zeno-, which is used to form some Jupiter-related words, such as zenographic.[c] Jovian is the adjectival form of Jupiter. The older adjectival form jovial, employed by astrologers in the Middle Ages, has come to mean 'happy' or 'merry', moods ascribed to Jupiter's influence in astrology.
Cloud Layers[edit]
Jupiter is perpetually covered with clouds of ammonia crystals, which may contain ammonium hydrosulfide as well. The clouds are located in the tropopause layer of the atmosphere, forming bands at different latitudes, known as tropical regions. These are subdivided into lighter-hued zones and darker belts. The interactions of these conflicting circulation patterns cause storms and turbulence. Wind speeds of 100 metres per second (360 km/h; 220 mph) are common in zonal jet streams. The zones have been observed to vary in width, colour and intensity from year to year, but they have remained stable enough for scientists to name them.
The cloud layer is about 50 km (31 mi) deep, and consists of at least two decks of ammonia clouds: a thin clearer region on top with a thick lower deck. There may be a thin layer of water clouds underlying the ammonia clouds, as suggested by flashes of lightning detected in the atmosphere of Jupiter. These electrical discharges can be up to a thousand times as powerful as lightning on Earth.[85] The water clouds are assumed to generate thunderstorms in the same way as terrestrial thunderstorms, driven by the heat rising from the interior. The Juno mission revealed the presence of "shallow lightning" which originates from ammonia-water clouds relatively high in the atmosphere. These discharges carry "mushballs" of water-ammonia slushes covered in ice, which fall deep into the atmosphere. Upper-atmospheric lightning has been observed in Jupiter's upper atmosphere, bright flashes of light that last around 1.4 milliseconds. These are known as "elves" or "sprites" and appear blue or pink due to the hydrogen.
The Great Red Spot[edit]
A well-known feature of Jupiter is the Great Red Spot, a persistent anticyclonic storm located 22° south of the equator. The Spot is larger than the Earth, and is known to have existed since at least 1831, and possibly since 1665. Images by the Hubble Space Telescope have shown two more "red spots" adjacent to the Great Red Spot. The storm is visible through Earth-based telescopes with an aperture of 12 cm or larger. The oval object rotates counterclockwise, with a period of about six days. The maximum altitude of this storm is about 8 km (5 mi) above the surrounding cloud tops. The Spot's composition and the source of its red colour remain uncertain, although photo-dissociated ammonia reacting with acetylene is a likely explanation.
Moons[edit]
Jupiter has 95 known natural satellites. Of these, 79 are less than 10 km in diameter. The four largest moons are:
- Io,
- Europa,
- Ganymede, and
- Callisto,
collectively known as the "Galilean moons", and are visible from Earth with binoculars on a clear night.
Galilean Moons[edit]
The moons discovered by Galileo (Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto) are among the largest in the Solar System. The orbits of Io, Europa, and Ganymede form a pattern known as a Laplace resonance; for every four orbits that Io makes around Jupiter, Europa makes exactly two orbits and Ganymede makes exactly one. This resonance causes the gravitational effects of the three large moons to distort their orbits into elliptical shapes, because each moon receives an extra tug from its neighbours at the same point in every orbit it makes. The tidal force from Jupiter, on the other hand, works to circularize their orbits.
The eccentricity of their orbits causes regular flexing of the three moons' shapes, with Jupiter's gravity stretching them out as they approach it and allowing them to spring back to more spherical shapes as they swing away. The friction created by this tidal flexing generates heat in the interior of the moons. This is seen most dramatically in the volcanic activity of Io (which is subject to the strongest tidal forces), and to a lesser degree in the geological youth of Europa's surface, which indicates recent resurfacing of the moon's exterior.
