Roger's paintings and sketches

Jupiter

Important to the ancient Babylonians, the brilliant planet Jupiter ruled the night sky and mapped out the Zodiacal constellations.

IN ROMAN AND GREEK MYTHOLOGY the god Jupiter was accepted as the most powerful and capricious ruler of the heavens; no wonder ancient astronomers gave the same name to the planet that year after year so brilliantly rules the night sky. After the Sun and the Moon, Jupiter is, indeed, the most spectacular object in the sky. Although Venus is at times brighter it cannot ride the midnight sky as does Jupiter.

Today's astronomers acknowledge Jupiter as being perhaps the most important planet of the Solar System. It is the largest and most massive. After the Sun-the star about which all bodies of the Solar System revolve -Jupiter contains two-thirds of the matter in the Solar System. Orbiting the Sun at an average distance of 779 million km (484 million mi.), Jupiter is some 5.2 times as far away as Earth.

Cuneiforms of the Babylonian epic Enuma Elish or Tablets of Creation refer to Jupiter in the Fifth Tablet as the marker of the signs of the Zodiac . . . "He (Marduk - the Creator) founded the station of Nibir (Jupiter) to determine their bounds. . ." To the Babylonians, Nibir was the special name for Jupiter when the planet appeared directly opposite to the Sun and thus shone high and brightly in the midnight sky over the fertile valley of the Euphrates. Since Jupiter travels around its orbit once in almost 12 years, the planet each year moves eastward to occupy the next constellation of the Zodiac. Also, as a result of the relative motions of Earth and Jupiter around the Sun, the faster moving Earth overtakes Jupiter and thereby causes the planet each year to trace out a third of the Zodiacal constellation, i.e., 10 degrees of arc, in a westward, or retrograde, direction relative to the stars