The Jovian System

The inner moons follow circular orbits around Jupiter interior to Io's orbit. They orbit in Jupiter's equatorial plane.

The four Galilean moons are the most well-known. They are visible through binoculars.

The Himalia group of moons orbits Jupiter at distances of around 11-12 million kilometers.

The Ananke group of moons orbits Jupiter in a retrograde direction at a distance of about 21 million kilometers. The Carme group also orbits Jupiter in a retrograde direction from about 23 million kilometers.

The Pasiphaë group contains Jupiter's most distant moons.

Themisto and Carpo do not belong to any group. Carpo orbits Jupiter in a prograde direction at the inner edge of the Anake group. Themisto orbits just outside the orbit of the Galilean moons.

The simulation JovianSystem.gsim shows Jupiter's 62 known moons. The initial starting conditions were obtained using data from JPL's Horizons Ephemeris Computation Service.





Download JovianSystem.gsim



(You need to have the program Gravity Simulator installed on your computer first. Click Here to download Gravity Simulator.)

