Jupiter is so big, it doesn't actually orbit the sun. Here's how.
Jupiter, our solar system’s fifth planet from
the sun, the massive gas giant that protects Earth and the inner planets from potential
catastrophic comet and asteroid strikes, is more unique than you’ve ever
imagined.
The gas giant is so huge, that it doesn’t
actually orbit around the sun. Jupiter is 2.5 times the mass of ALL other
planets in our solar system combined.
This means that it’s so freakishly large, that
the center of gravity between the gas giant and the sun does not reside within
the sun, but a point in space, located just above our sun’s surface.
And there’s a perfectly rational explanation
for that. When a smaller object orbits a bigger one, the smaller body does not
travel around the larger one in a circle. Instead, both these objects orbit a
‘shared’ center of Gravity; which means they meet somewhere in a perfect
center.
But Jupiter is special.
Due to the fact that the gas giant is so hefty,
its center of mass with the Sun lies exactly 1.07 solar radii from the center
of the sun– 7% of a sun radius over the surface of the sun.
And this (not to scale) GIF from NASA explains
the effect:
The gas giant is so large (estimated at
approximately 143,000 kilometers wide) that it could devour all of the known
planets in our solar system.
In fact, around 1,300 Earth’s can fit inside
the gas giant.
Our planet’s center of gravity resides so near
to the center of the sun that this effect is negligible. The larger object (the
Sun) doesn’t seem to move, while the smaller object (Earth) orbits around it.
In fact, the same can be said about all other planets in our solar system, like Mercury, Venus, and even Saturn; their centers of mass with the sun are located deep inside the sun itself.