The King of Planets

Jupiter is the largest planet in our solar system and, with its 67 known natural satellites, it might as well be a solar system of its own. Jupiter is two and a half times the mass of all the other planets in the Solar System combined. Many Planetary Scientists think that the case of Jupiter is that of a failed star. Had Jupiter been several orders of magnitude more massive it would have had the necessary mass to begin the nuclear fusion of hydrogen and thus given off light like a star. This would have given us a binary star system (a solar system with 2 stars) which is actually one of the most common types of systems in the universe.

Credit: NASA/ESA/Hubble