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Jupiter’s Moons

Jupiter’s Moons. Jupiter’s Moons. The four Galilean moons of Jupiter, in order of increasing distance from Jupiter: Io Jupiter’s volcanic moon Europa Jupiter’s smooth, icy moon Ganymede Jupiter’s largest moon

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Jupiter’s Moons

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  1. Jupiter’s Moons

  2. Jupiter’s Moons • The four Galilean moons of Jupiter, in order of increasing distance from Jupiter: • Io Jupiter’s volcanic moon • Europa Jupiter’s smooth, icy moon • Ganymede Jupiter’s largest moon • Callisto Jupiter’s cratered moon • Jupiter also has 50-60 small, asteroid-like moons • The smallest Galilean moon, Europa, is about the size of our Moon

  3. Tidal Resonances • The 4 Galilean moons always keep their same face to Jupiter i.e. their rotation period = their orbital period • Orbital periods are: • Calisto 16.7 days • Ganymede 7.2 days • Europa 3.6 days • Io 1.8 days

  4. Io, Europa and Ganymede are in resonance with each other: About 7 earth days is exactly • One Ganymede orbit • Two Europa orbits • Four Io orbits

  5. Io: The volcanic moon • Extremely active volcanos • The surface shows no • impact craters • Surface: lava (dark) and sulphur compounds (white and yellow) • Approximately 1m of lava is deposited per century • Io is heated by tidal flexing of the interior • Although the Io-Jupiter distance is about the same as the Earth-Moon distance, Jupiter is 300x more massive than the Earth and exerts immense tidal forces on Io

  6. Io’s plasma torus • Gas from the volcanos is ionized and trapped in a torus around Jupiter • Blobs are ionized sodium

  7. Europa: Water World • Europa’s crust is waterice • Below the crust there may be oceans of liquid salt water, or convecting ice

  8. The surface ice has ridges

  9. The Galileo Spacecraft Image of Europa:

  10. Ganymede: The largest moon in the solar system • Ganymede has both • old, cratered terrain (dark) • young, icy terrain with few craters (light colored) • May also have subterranean water

  11. Calisto: Cold, old, heavily crateredNo volcanic or tectonic activity

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