||The English used in this article or section may not be easy for everybody to understand. (September 2011)|
|Discovered by||S. B. Nicholson|
|Discovery time||July 6, 1938|
|Avg. distance from the center of its orbital path||11,720,000 km|
|How egg-shaped its orbit is
|How long it takes to complete an orbit||259.20 d (0.69 a)|
|Average speed||3.29 km/s|
|Angle above the reference plane
|28.30° (to the ecliptic)
25.77° (to Jupiter's equator)
|What it orbits||Jupiter|
|Size and Other Qualities|
|Average distance from its center to its surface||18 km|
|Area of its surface||~4100 km²|
|Volume inside it||~24,400 km³|
|Average density||2.6 g/cm³ (assumed)|
|Gravity at its surface||~0.013 m/s2 (0.001 g)|
|Slowest speed able to escape into space
|How much light it reflects||0.04 (assumed)|
|Avg. surface temp.||~124 K|
Lysithea (// ly-SITH-ee-ə, // li-SITH-ee-ə; Greek: Λυσιθέα) is a prograde non-spherical moon of Jupiter. It was found by Seth Barnes Nicholson in 1938 at Mount Wilson Observatory and is named after the mythological Lysithea, daughter of Oceanus and one of Zeus' lovers.
It belongs to the Himalia group, five moons orbiting between 11,000,000 and 13,000,000 km from Jupiter at an inclination of about 28.3°. Its orbital elements are as of January 2000. They are changing a lot due to Solar and planetary perturbations.
References[change | change source]
- Nicholson, S. B. (1938). "Two New Satellites of Jupiter". Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific 50: 292–293. http://adsabs.harvard.edu//full/seri/PASP./0050//0000292.000.html.
- Jacobson, R. A. (2000). "The orbits of outer Jovian satellites". Astronomical Journal 120: 2679-2686. .
- "Planetary Satellite Physical Parameters". JPL (Solar System Dynamics). 2008-10-24. http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/?sat_phys_par. Retrieved 2008-12-12.
- Marsden, B. G. (7 October 1974). "Satellites of Jupiter". IAUC Circular 2846. http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/iauc/02800/02846.html.
- Payne-Gaposchkin, Cecilia; Katherine Haramundanis (1970). Introduction to Astronomy. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. .
Other websites[change | change source]