Jupiter Moon Tracker Help

This form enables you to generate a Postscript file showing the east-west motion of Jovian satellites within a specified time period. The distance of each selected moon from the planet's axis is plotted in units of either arcsec or Jovian radii. Positive values correspond to bodies on the "morning" (east) side of Jupiter and negative values by the "evening" (west) side. In the diagram, the limbs of Jupiter are indicated by a dark gray stripe down the middle. The locations of the rings can be added as bands in lighter gray. Time increases downward on the plot.

The Tracker tool also allows you to download an ASCII table containing the numeric values that went into the diagram. The file contains a single header line followed by the numbers. Columns are as follows:

Change History

1.0 (January 28, 1997): Original Jupiter Moon Tracker on line.
1.1 (February 11, 1997): Added a new ephemeris option ("Pre-RPX #2").
2.0 (January 12, 1999): Revised user interface. Revised method of plotting Gossamer Ring(s). Added a new ephemeris option ("Post-Galileo").
2.1 (January 31, 2002): Added a new ephemeris option ("Post-Galileo #2"). Also expanded the ephemeris time limits for the small satellites.
2.2 (December 1, 2009): Updated the default ephemerides. To reduce confusion, we have removed the choice about what ephemeris to use.
2.5 (January 23, 2013): Renumbered for consistency across all the Moon Tracker tools. Ephemeris updates.
2.6 (January 4, 2016): Ported to new server. Ephemeris updates.
2.7 (October 14, 2020): Ephemeris updates.

Time Limits

The start and stop times (UTC) of the plot can be entered in a variety of formats. For example, the following all parse to 0:01:02 UTC on July 4, 1976: If you want the gory details of how times are interpreted, click here.

Interval: Enter the time interval to be used for the tabulation as a number in the box, and select the time unit from the choices provided. Start times and intervals are rounded to the nearest minute.

Plot Options

Scale: Enter the numeric range and units of the horizontal axis. The value you enter is actually half the width of the diagram; for example, if you enter 10 Jupiter radii, then the axis will run from -10 to 10. Zero always falls at the middle of the plot.

Title: Enter a title for the plot in this box. It will appear centered above the diagram.

Moon Selection

Click on the box to the left of each moon that you wish to include in the diagram and in the tabulation.

Ring Selection

Click on the box to the left of each ring that you wish to include in the diagram. Rings appear as gray vertical stripes on the plot. For plotting purposes, the rings are shown extending all the way down to the planet. For the "Gossamer Rings" option, two faint rings are shown bounded radially by the mean orbits of Amalthea and Thebe.
Jupiter Moon Tracker Form | Node Tools | Ring-Moon Systems Node Home

Last updated October 14, 2020.

Mark Showalter