Turns Out Jupiter Isn't The Size And Shape We Thought, NASA Says

We are now finding out that Jupiter is not be as big as once thought. New evidence from the Juno orbiter suggests that textbooks need to be revised as the giant is actually a little more squashed (by about 15 miles) at the poles and slightly slimmer (by roughly 5 miles) at the equator.

In a study published this week in Nature Astronomy, an international team of researchers using data from NASA’s Juno mission has redefined the physical dimensions of the gas giant. By analyzing 26 radio occultation measurements (made possible by Juno’s extended mission trajectory), it was found that Jupiter is approximately 8 kilometers (about 5 miles) narrower at its equator and 24 kilometers (about 15 miles) flatter at its poles than the consensus established by the Voyager and Pioneer missions in the late 1970s. While these discrepancies might seem trivial for a planet that spans over ...