Sidereal Rotation Period of Jupiter
| Value | 35,730 s |
| Status | Conventional / typical value |
| Source | NASA NSSDC Planetary Fact Sheet, Jupiter (sidereal rotation period, System III, 9.9250 h) |
| Categories | Astronomicalsolar-systemplanets |
| Planck time | 6.6274092e+47 tP |
| attosecond | 3.5730000e+22 as |
| femtosecond | 3.5730000e+19 fs |
| picosecond | 3.5730000e+16 ps |
| nanosecond | 35,730,000,000,000 ns |
| shake | 3,573,000,000,000 shake |
| microsecond | 35,730,000,000 μs |
| millisecond | 35,730,000 ms |
| second | 35,730 s |
| minute | 595.5 min |
| hour | 9.925 h |
| sidereal day | 0.41467391 sd |
| day | 0.41354167 d |
| week | 0.059077381 wk |
| fortnight | 0.02953869 fn |
| month | 0.013586864 mo |
| year | 0.0011322154 yr |
| decade | 0.00011322154 dec |
| century | 0.000011322154 cent |
| millennium | 0.0000011322154 mil |
| megayear | 1.1322154e-09 Myr |
| eon | 1.1322154e-12 eon |
Learning zone
Jupiter has no solid ground to time a rotation against, and its cloud bands will not agree on an answer: the equatorial zone circulates in about 9 h 50 m (System I), the higher latitudes in about 9 h 55.7 m (System II). The definitive clock is System III — the rotation of the magnetic field, read from the radio emission it sweeps past Earth — because the field is anchored in the metallic-hydrogen interior where the bulk of the planet actually turns. That is the 9.9250 hours quoted here.
The ten-hour day is the engine of everything visible. It flattens the planet by 6.5 per cent, organises the atmosphere into the counter-flowing belts and zones, powers a magnetic field twenty thousand times Earth's magnetic moment, and whirls the Great Red Spot — a storm that has spun between them for at least 190 years. It is also a fossil: the spin is leftover angular momentum from the collapsing gas that built the planet, preserved because nothing since has been able to slow it.