Jupiter spins around once on its axis every 9 hours. That’s pretty quick for a big old boss, isn’t it? I mean the Jupiter day is short! Being about 600 million kilometres further out than us, the great gas giant takes over 11 years to make one full orbit of the sun.
So, if you can picture it, ol’ Jupes spins almost three times faster than us, and takes almost 11 years longer to get there. By Jove.
I can identify. That sounds like a lot of my life actually - working at a thousand miles an hour, travelling at walking pace.
Meanwhile, Venus spins on its axis every 243 days - and not even in the right direction. It rotates backwards compared to its neighbours, and it takes 8 months to do a full a 360. You have to wait a long time for a Venusian sunset. In addition to slowly spinning backwards like some of sort of diva, Venus also takes 225 days to orbit the sun. So there, a day is longer than a year.
I can identify with that too. Sometimes the day can’t end soon enough, and it really feels like you’ve got seven months to go before you’re allowed to crawl into bed. The only thing missing is Christmas - which on Venus would happen twice a day, I assume. I quite like the idea of Breakfast Christmas. That’s a thought for another day.
Back here on Earth, the numbers are better, but the climate is woeful today. It feels as though it’s spent two days either raining, about to rain, or having just rained, which has done little to help the passage of time. I’m not saying I want to be tumbling through clouds of freezing hydrogen gas by the way, or standing on a rocky shore with liquid methane lapping at my space-suit. Earth will do nicely thanks. I think I just want a little dry spell when I don’t have to carry an umbrella, or run for the house like Linford Christie.
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