Planetary flattening

Okay, so imagine you have a ball - like a basketball or a soccer ball. When you look at it from the side, it looks like a perfect circle, right? But what if I told you that some planets in space aren't perfect circles?

Some planets, like Earth, are a little bit squished at the top and bottom. This means that if you look at them from the side, they don't look like a circle - they look more like a spinning top. We call this "planetary flattening".

This happens because planets spin around their axis, just like how you spin a top around its pointy end. As the planet spins, it starts to bulge at the equator, which is the imaginary line that circles around the middle of the planet.

This bulging happens because the spinning motion makes everything on the equator move faster than things close to the poles (which are the top and bottom of the planet). Think of it like a rollercoaster - the people sitting on the outside of the ride experience stronger forces than the people sitting in the middle.

So, when a planet spins really fast, like Jupiter or Saturn, it will bulge out even more at the equator. But don't worry - this bulging isn't enough to make the planet fall apart! Planets are very strong and stable, and they can keep spinning for billions of years.