Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system, more than 11 times bigger than earth. Likely because of this, it was named after the king of the gods in Roman mythology.

There's no single person who discovered Jupiter floating in the sky one day, but many people credit Galileo, since he was the astronomer who made the first detailed observations of the planet. Galileo was also the first astronomer to discover the four largest moons that orbit the planet, Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto.

These observations of Jupiter and its moons were made in 1610.

Jupiter has recently celebrated its 4.5 billionth birthday, and was one of the first planets formed along with Mercury, Venus, Neptune, and most other planets.

No manned missions to Jupiter have ever occurred, due to the humongous distance between earth and this gas giant. Although, Pioneer 11 and 12 passed by it in the 1970s, Voyagers I and II passed the planet in 1979, and the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft made a short visit to Jupiter and used the planet's gravity to speed its trip to Saturn. A new spacecraft named Juno has been on its way to Jupiter for four years, and is only one year away. The Juno mission aims to reveal the story of Jupiter's formation and details of its interior structure. Data from Juno will provide insight to our solar system's beginnings, and what we learn from the mission will also add to scientists' understanding of giant planets around other stars.

Jupiter has the shortest period of rotation at only 9hrs 50mis and 30secs, but it's revolution around the sun takes 11.9 years.

Jupiter has a diameter of 142,984 km, making it the largest planet in our solar system for size. But that definitely not true for its density, and as a gas giant, it has the 2nd lowest density of all the planets at 1.3 g/cm3.

Jupiter is a fascinating planet and can sometimes be viewed in the night sky, which is always an amazing sight. Maybe if you look close enough, you'll be able to catch a glimpse of this big bright planet, 588 million kms away.