Giove

Giove, known in English as Jupiter, is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest object in the Solar System. It is a gas giant whose bulk is composed mainly of hydrogen and helium. Giove has a diameter of about 139,822 kilometers and a mass about 318 times that of Earth. Its immense gravity dominates the Jovian system, and it completes an orbit around the Sun in about 11.86 years. The planet’s rapid rotation—a day lasts about 9.9 hours—produces a pronounced equatorial bulge and complex cloud bands.

The atmosphere is marked by zones and belts of alternating colors, and by the Great Red Spot, a long-lived anticyclonic storm larger than Earth. Giove possesses a strong magnetic field and extensive radiation belts. Its system includes dozens of moons, among which the Galilean moons Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto are the most notable. Io is highly volcanically active; Europa is believed to hide a subsurface ocean; Ganymede is the largest moon in the Solar System; Callisto shows an ancient, heavily cratered surface.

Giove has been studied by multiple space missions, beginning with Pioneer and Voyager flybys in the 1970s, and later by the Galileo orbiter in the 1990s and 2000s and the Juno orbiter, which has provided detailed data about its atmosphere, magnetosphere, and interior. The planet’s immense gravity and magnetic field influence the dynamics of the outer Solar System and affect spacecraft trajectories.

In Roman mythology, Giove is the king of the gods, ruler of the sky and thunder, and husband of Juno. The name corresponds to the Greek Zeus. In contemporary Italian, Giove is the term for Jupiter.