These gargantuan dimensions aren’t only impressive—they played a major role in shaping our solar system as it exists today. Almathea and Thebe respectively circle Jupiter at slightly tilted orbits roughly 112,400 and 138,000 miles above the planet’s cloudtops. Based on their calculations, researchers believe early Jupiter was 2 to 2.5 times larger than it is today with a much more powerful magnetic field. They also suggest that gas giants generally form through core accretion–or when a gas rapidly gathers around a core of ice and rock. “This brings us closer to understanding how not only Jupiter but the entire solar system took shape.”