✧ ENTERING THE REALM OF GIANTS ✧
The landscape shifts. No more solid ground beneath your feet—from here on, you drift through realms of gas and mystery. Jupiter looms ahead, massive beyond comprehension. This is a world that could swallow 1,300 Earths. A planet so powerful its gravity shepherds asteroids, protects inner worlds, and commands a retinue of 95 known moons.
Bands of orange, brown, white, and red swirl across its face—storms the size of planets, winds screaming at 400 mph. The Great Red Spot, a hurricane that has raged for at least 350 years, stares back like a cosmic eye.
Your eye has watched since time began—
A hurricane that never dims,
Older than the works of man.
Just clouds that fall forever down
To pressures none have felt before,
Where hydrogen forms metallic crown.
Between the worlds we know and strange—
Beyond you, warmth becomes the past,
And ice defines the cosmic range.
◈ A SYSTEM UNTO ITSELF ◈
Jupiter isn't just a planet—it's a miniature solar system. Its four largest moons, the Galilean satellites, are worlds in their own right. Io is the most volcanically active body in the solar system. Europa hides a subsurface ocean that may harbor twice as much water as all of Earth's oceans combined. Ganymede is larger than Mercury. Jupiter also wears faint rings and possesses the largest magnetosphere in the solar system.
◈ ARCHIVES & KNOWLEDGE ◈
Each one a captured wanderer bound—
Through radiation belts they pass,
Where particles spiral round and round.
Of oceans locked beneath the ice,
While Ganymede with magnetic streams
Defies the chaos, holds its splice.
A system ruling smaller spheres—
Gravity's architect and soul,
Shepherd of our solar years.