Jupiter Jupiter Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest in the Solar System. It is a giant planet with a mass one-thousandth that of the Sun, but two-and-a-half times that of all the other planets in the Solar System combined. Jupiter and Saturn are gas giants; the other two giant planets, Uranus and Neptune, are ice giants. Jupiter has been known to astronomers since antiquity. It is named after the Roman god Jupiter. When viewed from Earth, Jupiter can reach an apparent magnitude of −2.94, bright enough for its reflected light to cast shadows, and making it
Solar eclipses on Jupiter the variations were caused by the varying distance between Earth and Jupiter as the two planets moved in their orbits around the Sun. Spacecraft can be used to observe the solar eclipses on Jupiter; these include "Pioneer 10" and "Pioneer 11" (1973 and 1974), "Voyager 1" and "Voyager 2" (1979), "Galileo" orbiter (1995–2003), "Cassini–Huygens" (2000) and "New Horizons" (2007) observed the transits of their moons and its shadows. The mean angular diameter of the Sun as viewed from Jupiter is 372 arc-seconds, or 6' 12" (about that of the Sun as viewed from Earth), varying slightly from 381" at perihelion