Tuesday, April 16, 2019

[aeebwcrh] Jupiter moons clock

Create a clock in which the hands represent Jupiter's Galilean moons orbiting around Jupiter.  The fastest hand (Io) rotates around the face every 1.8 days and the slowest (Callisto) 16.7 days, so it is much slower than a normal clock.  Previously, planets.

The inner moons Io, Europa, and Ganymede are in 1:2:4 resonance: can this be cleverly illustrated?  Also, the resonance causes the moons' orbital speeds to vary from if they were orbiting alone.

More sophisticated: the clock shows where the moons appear when viewed from earth (e.g., indicate earth is permanently in the direction of 6 o'clock), so incorporates corrections for the variations in viewing angle caused by the movement of the earth, and delays due to the speed of light.  This would probably be very difficult to construct purely mechanically.

Also indicate eclipses, when moons, particularly Io, disappear into and reappear out of Jupiter's shadow.  Note that Jupiter's shadow is not always directly behind Jupiter from Earth's point of view (if it were, eclipses would be identical to occultations).  The earth is separated enough from the sun to get an angle on Jupiter's shadow cylinder or cone.

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