Buzz
Jupiter doesn't orbit the Sun in the way we usually think. Dive deeper with Tech Insider.When we imagine the solar system, we often envision a still Sun at the center, with planets moving around it in perfect circles. This image is easy to grasp, but it’s misleading. Take Jupiter, for instance. It doesn’t orbit the Sun’s center; instead, it revolves around a point in space between the two called the barycenter. This is because Jupiter’s enormous size means its gravity also affects the Sun’s motion.
The Sun is about 1,000 times more massive than Jupiter, and the two bodies exert gravitational forces on each other according to their masses and distance. This means Jupiter’s gravitational pull on the Sun is one-thousandth as strong as the Sun’s pull on Jupiter. Interestingly, it takes Jupiter 11.8 Earth years to complete its orbit, and the Sun orbits the barycenter in the same amount of time.
The barycenter between the Sun and Jupiter is located 1.07 times the Sun’s radius from its center, or roughly 7 percent of the Sun’s radius from its surface. The Sun also orbits this point, and if you observe the planetary plane from above, you’ll notice a slight wobble as the Sun moves around the Milky Way, as shown in this mesmerizing NASA animation.
This isn't just a fascinating tidbit for impressing guests at dinner parties — though who doesn't appreciate someone who kicks off sentences with 'Well, technically...' — the real-world application comes when planet-hunting scientists search for similar star wobbles, allowing them to infer the existence of other giant celestial bodies.
To get more technical, it's worth noting that no other planets orbit directly at the sun's center, either. However, the effect they have on the sun is so small that it can be said they orbit its center, as their (and our) barycenters are buried deep within the sun's hot plasma.
One major reason for this is Jupiter's enormous size: If you stacked all the other planets on one side of an incredibly massive scale and doubled that pile just for fun, Jupiter would still weigh more than all of them combined.
But don't lose hope! Not everything we've been taught is inaccurate! Understanding the barycenters of orbits serves as a reminder that everything is interconnected, and every element has some level of influence on the others — sometimes greatly, sometimes minutely, but always quantifiable. Our solar system isn't made up of a collection of simple rotating circles — think of it as a pulsating math cloud, with each element moving through its own orbit. We live in a system of oddly shaped spheres, all connected, sharing a fascinating path through space.
An artistic rendering of our solar system.
Image courtesy of Antar Dayal/Getty ImagesNew stars are being discovered all the time, and one of the largest found to date is called UY Scuti. This massive red supergiant is roughly 1,700 times larger than our sun when measured by the volume it occupies. However, it isn't very dense, and it only has about 30 times the mass of the sun.
