• Question: watis the biggest planet in the universe?

    Asked by narty to Christine, Edd, Jess, Nicolas, Zara on 16 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Edward Codling

      Edward Codling answered on 16 Jun 2011:

      The biggest planet in our solar system is easily Jupiter – it is a huge giant planet made of gas. It is two and a half times bigger than all the other planets in the solar system combined!
      http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/profile.cfm?Object=Jupiter

      One of the interesting things about Jupiter is the swirling clouds that form interesting patterns – the ‘great spot’ is a famous cloud formation that you can clearly see (look at the bottom right in the pictures in the link).

      We don’t know what the biggest planet in the universe is as there are so many places that we don’t know about. The biggest planet we have found is supposed to be about twice the size of Jupiter – which is pretty big.

      However, planets are much much smaller than stars – our sun is 1000 times bigger than Jupiter (by mass) but there are stars we know about thousands of times bigger than our sun. The universe really is a big place! 🙂

    • Photo: Zara Gladman

      Zara Gladman answered on 16 Jun 2011:

      Edd has already given a great answer… basically, we don’t know! 8)

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