Is that a planet or a sleepy star? It's a Star Planet!

I have been thinking about when did my interest in astronomy was born. I remember that when I was in elementary school, like in 4th grade, I took a curious book that had as title something like “Our Universe”. Since the moment I opened it I couldn’t take my eyes out of those colorful pages, in fact, I asked my teacher if I could keep it for some days. I couldn’t even stop reading it at home: if fell in love with the immensity of the Universe that I was watching through the fabulous pictures. But something called my attention: when I began the chapter about Jupiter I couldn’t believe what it said: “Jupiter could have become a star”.

Wooow! I said… but then I discovered that it wasn’t as illogical as I first though because Jupiter is TWO TIMES more massive than all other planets of the Solar System together (and 317 as massive as Earth, what a small world!, don’t you think?). That’s why this HUGE NEIGHBOR was called after the chief god in Roman mythology: JUPITER. It is the undisputed senior member of the Solar System. (Burnham, 152)

Had Jupiter been 80 times more massive, pressure from its outer layers could have raised interior temperatures enough to trigger nuclear reactions, thereby making it a low-mass star. (Burnham, 152) And how much would it need to become a high-mass star?

Ok, now let’s talk about some basic facts about this big friend:

 

Diameter	88, 730 miles (142, 796 km)
Mass	317.8 Earth masses
Rotation period	0.41 Earth days
Inclination of equator to orbit	3.1 degrees
Mean orbital speed	8 miles/second (13km/s)
Mean distance from the Sun	485 million miles (778 million km)

(Burnham, 153)

If we could travel as fast as light we could reach Jupiter in about 43 minutes, knowing that Jupiter is about 780 million km. from us and the velocity of light is about 300,000 km/s (can you imagine that?) But I’m so sorry to inform you that it’ll be pretty difficult. Nevertheless, we don’t know how far could we get with the contant advance of technology.

Even though, the entusiam of scientist never gave up so they began to sent spacecrafts such as Pioneer 1(1972), then Voyager 1 and 2 (both in 1977) and the most recent: the Galileo spacecraft, which arrived to Jupiter in 1995. (Burnham, 153)
All these brave explorer robots allowed humanity to contemplate the Big Brother of the Solar System planets.

Bibliography:

Robert Burnham, Alan Dyer, Jeff Kanipe. Astronomy: The Definitive Guide. Singapore: Barnes & Noble, Inc., 2003.