Satellite Location · Entry IV

Jupiter

Live System Map

The Jovian system rendered in true 3-D Jupiter-centered geometry — 4 Galilean moons, 4 inner ring-shepherds, 8 representative irregular satellites, and Juno's 33-day polar orbit (active, extended-mission phase), with Jupiter rotating beneath at the System III sidereal rate. Two inbound spacecraft (Europa Clipper and JUICE) are catalogued but rendered only after arrival in 2030 and 2031.

Moon elements: Jacobson 2013/2021 (JUP310/JUP344), JPL Sat. Ephemerides · Juno orbit: NASA/JPL navigation timeline · Rotation: IAU 2015 (System III, W₀ = 284.95°)
4
Galilean Moons
4
Inner Moons
8
Irregular Moons
1
Recent Orbiter
2
Inbound
95+
Total Known

Jupiter is a planetary system inside the Solar System. Its 97 confirmed moons span a factor of ~190 in orbital radius, from Metis at 1.79 R_J to Sinope at 335 R_J — from Metis at 1.79 RJ grazing the main ring to Pasiphae and Sinope on chaotic retrograde orbits 335 RJ out. This map propagates them all in a single Jupiter-centered J2000 equatorial frame: the four Galileans locked in the Io–Europa–Ganymede 4:2:1 Laplace resonance, the four inner shepherds inside Io's orbit feeding the gossamer rings, and eight named representatives of the Himalia / Ananke / Carme / Pasiphae irregular families. Juno's ~33-day polar orbit (post-Io flyby, Feb 2024 configuration) is shown as the spacecraft remains in its extended mission past the originally scheduled September 2025 disposal date. Galileo's representative late-mission orbit is drawn as a dashed historical trail — the spacecraft itself was disposed into Jupiter's atmosphere in September 2003. Europa Clipper and JUICE are in heliocentric cruise and appear only on the timeline.

RAVEN Satellite Location · Jupiter

Jupiter-Centered Inertial · Equatorial Frame

J2000 Jupiter equator. Spheres = moons (Galileans locked in 4:2:1 Laplace resonance). Cyan octahedron = Juno; dashed gray = Galileo's representative late-mission orbit. Use the camera presets to step from inner rings → Galilean system → Juno orbit → full irregular cloud.

Layers

Clock

UTC—
JD (TDB)—
Sys III meridian λIII—
Io phase (I:E:G = 4:2:1)—
Time accel.×3.6k
Jupiter rotates once every 9 h 55 m 30 s (System III). Io laps Jupiter in 1.77 d; Callisto in 16.69 d; the outer irregulars take ~250 – 760 d.

Camera Presets

simulated — · two-body Kepler from published mean elements
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Catalog

Every body above with the orbital element set the visualization is propagated from. Click a card to fly the camera to that body.

Galilean Moons 4 · 4:2:1 Laplace resonance

Inner Moons (ring shepherds) 4

Irregular Moons 8 · 4 prograde · 4 retrograde

Orbiters 1 active orbit · 1 historical · 2 inbound

How the Positions Are Computed

Propagation

Every body is propagated as a two-body Keplerian ellipse from its published mean orbital elements (semi-major axis, eccentricity, inclination, ascending node, argument of periapsis, mean anomaly at epoch) using µJ = 1.26686534 × 10⁸ km³/s² and RJ = 71 492 km (equatorial). Kepler's equation M = E − e·sin E is solved per frame by Newton iteration, then orbital-plane state is rotated through the 3-1-3 Euler chain (Ω, i, ω) into the Jupiter-centered J2000 equatorial frame.

For the Galileans, two-body is accurate to within ~hundreds of km over a single orbit — the mutual perturbations that maintain the Laplace resonance are sub-promille effects on positions. For irregular moons two-body is good to several thousand km over a year; solar perturbations are the dominant non-Keplerian effect and produce slow secular drift in (Ω, ω) that does not change orbital shape. None of this matters for visual phasing at this rendering scale. Absolute phase along orbit is the only quantity that drifts from a one-shot snapshot; for that, the production deployment is the JPL Horizons 6-hourly state-vector pipeline interpolated client-side.

Jupiter rotation

Jupiter is rotated about its spin axis at the IAU 2015 System III sidereal rate of 870.5360000°/day, with prime-meridian reference at J2000 of W₀ = 284.95°. System III is the magnetic-field rotation rate (decametric radio) and is the canonical Jovian rotation frame. The visible cloud bands rotate at System I (equatorial) and System II (mid-latitude) rates 5 – 7 min/day faster than System III, but at our rendering scale that drift is invisible.

Juno orbit

Juno was inserted into a 53.4-day capture orbit on 2016-07-04. Two perijove-trimming maneuvers and successive Ganymede (Jun 2021), Europa (Sep 2022) and Io flybys (Dec 2023 + Feb 2024) walked it down through 43 → 38 → 33 days. The orbit drawn here is the post-Io-flyby 33-day configuration — periapsis ~4 000 km above the cloud tops, apoapsis ~5.8 × 10⁶ km — propagated as a single Keplerian ellipse. NASA's extended mission ran through September 2025. Juno was zeroed in the FY2026 budget request and no extension has been announced, so its operational status after 2025-09-30 is uncertain; no atmospheric disposal has been confirmed either. The orbit is drawn as flown. The cyan octahedron is the spacecraft itself; the ring around it is a screen-space sprite scaled with camera distance so Juno stays findable at any zoom level.

Inbound spacecraft

Europa Clipper (launched 2024-10-14, arrival ~2030-04-11) and JUICE (launched 2023-04-14, arrival 2031-07-21) are not yet at Jupiter and are not rendered. Both will appear as live orbits in the next revision of this page once at the system.

References

  1. Jacobson, R. A. 2013 — JUP310 / JUP344 satellite ephemerides, JPL Solar System Dynamics
  2. Archinal, B. A. et al. 2018 — IAU WGCCRE 2015 report (Jupiter rotation model, Galilean orientations)
  3. Bolton, S. J. et al. 2017 — Juno mission overview & first results, Science 356
  4. Hansen, C. J. et al. 2024 — Juno's extended mission and Io flyby campaign, JGR Planets 129
  5. Sinclair, A. T. 1989 — The orbits of the Galilean satellites, Cel. Mech. 46
  6. Lainey, V. et al. 2009 — Strong tidal dissipation in Io and Jupiter, Nature 459 (Laplace-resonance dynamics)
  7. Sheppard, S. S. & Jewitt, D. C. 2003 — An abundant population of small irregular satellites around Jupiter, Nature 423
  8. Ćuk, M. & Burns, J. A. 2004 — Gas drag in primordial Jovian capture of irregular moons, Icarus 167
  9. Showalter, M. R. et al. 2008 — The rings of Jupiter — discovery + Galileo refinement, ApJ 677
  10. Anderson, J. D. et al. 1996 — Io's gravity field and interior, Science 272, 709 (Galileo; the DOI previously cited here resolves to nothing and the 2001/vol-281 pairing was self-inconsistent)
  11. Russell, C. T. (ed.) 1992 — The Galileo Mission, Space Science Reviews 60 (mission overview; the DOI previously cited here resolves to nothing)
  12. Pappalardo, R. T. et al. 2024 — Europa Clipper mission overview, Space Sci. Rev. 220
  13. Grasset, O. et al. 2013 — JUICE mission overview, Planet. & Space Sci. 78
  14. JPL Horizons — canonical ephemerides for Jupiter, all moons, Juno, Europa Clipper, JUICE
  15. NSSDC Planetary Science — Jovian mission summaries, rings & satellite data sheets

Fourth entry in the RAVEN Satellite Location series · v1 · 2026-05-13