Bringing happiness to life, Jupiter is the planet of enthusiasm, good fortune, big-heartedness, and success. Expressed in its positive form, Jupiter brings a zest for life and new experiences, good health, prominence, wealth, generosity, honesty, and plain old good luck. If Jupiter is afflicted (at odds with another planet in your horoscope), Jupiter's influence results in laziness, boastfulness, extravagance, and blind and misdirected optimism.

Jupiter, the largest planet in the solar system, is the fifth planet from the Sun. Essentially a giant ball of hydrogen and helium gas, Jupiter has 1400 times the volume of Earth and 318 times the mass. Jupiter is roughly 5 times further from the Sun than earth and takes 11.9 years to make a complete orbit. Jupiter's most famous feature is the Great Red Spot, which is an anticyclonic storm which has raged in the atmosphere for centuries. The planet has at least 16 moons: the four largest were discovered in 1610 by Galileo. They are named after the mythological paramours of Jupiter: Europa, Io, Ganymede, and Callisto. Callisto is almost as large as Mercury, and Ganymede is even larger than Mercury. Europa's extremely smooth surface is covered by a layer of water, ice, and liquid water may lie beneath the ice. Io is hellish in comparison with intense volcanic activity and sulfur dioxide spewing from vents on the surface.