User:Nrco0e/Notes/Irregular moons/Moons of Jupiter

List


The moons of Jupiter are listed below by orbital period. Moons massive enough for their surfaces to have collapsed into a spheroid are highlighted in bold. These are the four Galilean moons, which are comparable in size to the Moon. The other moons are much smaller, with the least massive Galilean moon being more than 7,000 times more massive than the most massive of the other moons. The irregular captured moons are shaded light gray and orange when prograde and yellow, red, and dark gray when retrograde. The orbits and mean distances of the irregular moons are strongly variable over short timescales due to frequent planetary and solar perturbations, therefore the orbital elements of all irregular moons shown here are averaged over a 400-year numerical integration. Their proper orbital elements are all based on the epoch of 1 January 2000. A number of other moons have only been observed for a year or two, but have decent enough orbits to be easily measurable at present.