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3-hour timelapse showing rotation of Jupiter and orbital motion of the moons. Jupiter is the only planet whose barycentre with the Sun lies outside the volume of the Sun, though by 7% of the Sun's radius. [130] [131] The average distance between Jupiter and the Sun is 778 million km (5.2 AU) and it completes an orbit every 11.86 years.
The orbital period (also revolution period) is the amount of time a given astronomical object takes to complete one orbit around another object. In astronomy , it usually applies to planets or asteroids orbiting the Sun , moons orbiting planets, exoplanets orbiting other stars , or binary stars .
A montage of Jupiter and its four largest moons (distance and sizes not to scale) There are 95 moons of Jupiter with confirmed orbits as of 5 February 2024. [1] [note 1] This number does not include a number of meter-sized moonlets thought to be shed from the inner moons, nor hundreds of possible kilometer-sized outer irregular moons that were only briefly captured by telescopes. [4]
Due to tidal locking, Metis rotates synchronously with its orbital period (about 7 hours), with its longest axis aligned towards Jupiter. [3] [4] Jupiter casts a shadow on all of Metis for 68 minutes each Metian day. [a] Metis lies inside Jupiter's synchronous orbit radius (as does Adrastea), and as a result, tidal forces slowly cause its orbit ...
The Sun would disappear behind Jupiter's bulk for an hour and a half each revolution, and Amalthea's short rotation period gives it just under six hours of daylight. Though Jupiter would appear 900 times brighter than the full moon, its light would be spread over an area some 8,500 times greater and it would not look as bright per surface unit. [b]
In astronomy, the rotation period or spin period [1] of a celestial object (e.g., star, planet, moon, asteroid) has two definitions. The first one corresponds to the sidereal rotation period (or sidereal day ), i.e., the time that the object takes to complete a full rotation around its axis relative to the background stars ( inertial space ).
Orbital diagram Orbit (side-view) compared to Jupiter. Kaʻepaokaʻawela orbits the Sun at a distance of 3.2–7.1 AU once every 11 years and 8 months (4,256 days; semi-major axis of 5.14 AU). Its orbit has an eccentricity of 0.38 and an inclination of 163° with respect to the ecliptic. [6] Its period is close to the 11.86-year period of Jupiter.
Io (/ ˈ aɪ. oʊ /), or Jupiter I, is the innermost and second-smallest of the four Galilean moons of the planet Jupiter.Slightly larger than Earth's moon, Io is the fourth-largest moon in the Solar System, has the highest density of any moon, the strongest surface gravity of any moon, and the lowest amount of water by atomic ratio of any known astronomical object in the Solar System.