What planet spins or rotates the fastest?
Generally, the bigger they the faster they spin.
You’d think that being the largest planet Jupiter would rotate the slowest but in fact it’s the fastest. It rotates once every 9 hours and 50 minutes. The rapid rotation is what causes the extremely powerful winds that split Jupiter’s atmosphere into bands.
Rotational Speeds of the Planets and other objects*
| Mercury | 58 days, 15 hours, 30 minutes |
| Venus | 243 days, 26 minutes |
| Earth | 23 hours, 56 minutes |
| Mars | 24 hours, 37 minutes |
| Jupiter | 9 hours, 50 minutes(equatorial) |
| Saturn | 10 hours, 14 minutes(equatorial) |
| Uranus | 17 hours, 14 minutes |
| Neptune | 16 hours, 7 minutes |
| Pluto | 6 days, 9 hours, 17 minutes |
| Moon | 27 days, 7 hours, 14 minutes |
*Sidereal rotation periods
- Discover
- Planet
- Solar System
- Speed
This Q&A by Brent Mitchell
Brent's dream was to grow-up and be a scientist. While the growing up part is debatable, he was a clinical researcher for...
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