Jupiter

Reference

Sources

Why trust this. Search retrieves. The walk is where the looking happens.

Doors

Stars keeps the choir plate Jupiter · Io. This house doors it; it does not replace it.

The Book keeps the memoir of the degree, the survey, and the unrounded hours. This house excerpts and doors. It does not overwrite.

This house owns the encounter with the system: scale, four weathers, resonance as an instrument, Galileo's week, Rømer's late clock, and the particular myths.

Walk

Four worlds

  • Io

    Fire under law · 1.769137786 d

  • Europa

    Ice over a hidden sea · 3.551 d

  • Ganymede

    A world with its own field · 7.155 d

  • Callisto

    The old cratered quiet · 16.689 d

Atlas

Heliocentric distance
~5.2 AU
A year of about 11.86 Earth years, the long clock called a Jupiter return.
Mean density
1.33 g/cm³
Less dense than water-rock worlds. A giant of light elements.
Equatorial gravity
~24.8 m/s²
About 2.5 times Earth’s surface gravity, if there were a surface.
Bond albedo
~0.50
Clouds return about half the sunlight. Cream and ochre are weather, not rock.
Axial tilt
3.13°
Almost no seasons of the Earth kind. The weather is internal.
Rings
Faint, dusty
Discovered by Voyager 1 in 1979. Not Saturn’s architecture. A thin halo of spent material.
Named moons
115 (NASA, Aug 2026)
The four Galilean worlds hold ~99.997% of the mass in orbit. The rest is a swarm of captives. Census numbers move; the four do not.
Great Red Spot
Larger than Earth
An anticyclone tracked since the 19th century, possibly since Hooke/Cassini in the 1660s. It has been shrinking. It is still a world of storm.

Ledger

  • mission

    NASA Science · Jupiter

    Agency overview of the planet, moons (115 named as of August 2026), and missions.

  • catalogue

    NASA Science · Jupiter's moons

    Galilean satellites; census dated August 2026.

  • catalogue

    JPL Horizons

    Io sidereal period used in the Book: 1.769137786 d = 42.4593 h.

  • mission

    Juno mission · NASA / SwRI / JPL / MSSS

    Polar orbiter, 2016–present. JunoCam plates are processed science images. January 2021 extension: 42 additional orbits, expanding from the planet into the Jovian system (Ganymede, Europa, Io, rings).

  • mission

    NASA · Juno mission expands into the future (13 January 2021)

    Primary source for the 42 additional orbits of the extended mission, including planned flybys of Ganymede, Europa and Io. A schedule. Not a slogan.

  • catalogue

    NASA Science · Io

    Io’s orbit is about 42.5 hours. Rapid orbit and forced eccentricity drive the tidal heating of the most volcanic world known. The Book does not round the Horizons sidereal period: 1.769137786 d = 42.4593 h. Rømer’s own phrase was about 42.5 hours.

  • mission

    Hubble Site · Jupiter

    Hubble limb, family portrait, and ultraviolet aurora plates used in this house. NASA / ESA. Processed or spectral as labelled.

  • mission

    ESA JUICE

    Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer. Bound for Ganymede, with Europa and Callisto in the tour.

  • mission

    NASA Europa Clipper

    Multiple flybys of Europa. An ocean inferred is not an ocean sampled.

  • mission

    Galileo orbiter archive

    1995–2003. Moon mosaics in this house are Galileo / Voyager plates.

  • historical

    Galileo Galilei, Sidereus Nuncius (Venice, 1610)

    First published account of the four attendants. Observations from Padua begin 7 January 1610; recognition by 15 January. Sketches of points in a line, not a photograph.

  • historical

    Simon Marius, Mundus Iovialis (Nuremberg, 1614)

    Names Io, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto, credited to a suggestion of Kepler. Discovery and naming are different events.

  • historical

    Ole Rømer, communication to the Académie Royale des Sciences, 1676

    Io eclipses as a clock; light delayed by extra distance. His own phrasing: about 42.5 hours for a revolution of the first satellite. English door: Philosophical Transactions, 1677. The 22-minute crossing is a travel time, not a modern kilometres-per-second figure.

  • historical

    Pierre-Simon Laplace on the three-body lock of Io, Europa and Ganymede

    Paris, late eighteenth century. Mean-motion lock 4:2:1. Laplace explained the lock; he did not know Io was volcanic.

  • paper

    Peale, Cassen & Reynolds, Melting of Io by Tidal Dissipation (Science, 1979)

    Predicted tidal melting from the forced eccentricity. Voyager 1 photographed Io’s plumes days later.

  • historical

    Giovanni Domenico Cassini · Jupiter’s belts and a southern spot (1660s–1670s)

    Bologna, then Paris Observatory. Belts resolved; rotation timed from a southern spot. Continuity with today’s Great Red Spot is contested.

  • historical

    Enūma Anu Enlil · celestial omen series

    About seventy tablets of celestial and terrestrial omens, compiled and copied in the second and first millennia BCE. Used by Neo-Assyrian court scholars. Not personality astrology: if a light behaves thus, then king and land. Jupiter material edited in Reiner and Pingree, Babylonian Planetary Omens, Part Four (2005).

  • historical

    Astronomical Diaries from Babylon · Sachs and Hunger

    Akkadian clay records, about 652 to 61 BCE. Most surviving tablets: British Museum. MUL.BABBAR (white star) is the Diaries’ name for the wanderer. Observation, weather, prices, and city events on one tablet. Edition: Astronomical Diaries and Related Texts from Babylonia (Vienna).

  • historical

    Reiner and Pingree, Babylonian Planetary Omens, Part Four (2005)

    Critical edition of first-millennium Jupiter omens (MUL.SAG.ME.GAR, Šulpae, related designations). Distinguishes omen protasis from later astronomical inference.

  • historical

    Sima Qian, Shiji · Treatise on the Celestial Offices

    Han court history. Celestial offices as state knowledge. Suìxīng (Year Star) and the five moving stars, including 木星 the Wood Star. A year-count from a twelve-year circuit, not a king-planet doctrine.

  • historical

    Rigveda · Bṛhaspati; later Jyotisha / Navagraha

    Vedic office: priest and counselor. Planetary identification with the wanderer is later. Thursday (Guru-vāra, Bṛhaspati-vāra) keeps the name. Do not read the hymn as a field guide.

  • archive

    Stars · Jupiter · Io

    Canonical choir plate in Stars. This house doors it.

  • archive

    The Book of 42 · Stars · Jupiter

    Memoir of 4°20′, 28 June 2025, 1693 station, Io 42.46 h, Laplace 4:2:1. Canonical wording excerpted here, not rewritten.

  • image

    PIA22946 · JunoCam

    Processed Juno image of Jupiter's atmosphere. NASA / JPL-Caltech / SwRI / MSSS.

  • image

    PIA21972 · Great Red Spot, Juno PJ7

    Close pass 11 July 2017. Processed. NASA / JPL-Caltech / SwRI / MSSS.

  • image

    Hubble · Jupiter and the Great Red Spot

    NASA / ESA. Processed color. Used as limb plate.

  • image

    Hubble · Jovian aurorae

    Ultraviolet aurora. False-colour / processed science image, not what the unaided eye would see.

  • image

    PIA24791 · Ganymede, Juno

    7 June 2021 close pass. Processed. NASA / JPL-Caltech / SwRI / MSSS.

  • image

    PIA00271 · Europa, Galileo true-color

    True-color globe. NASA / JPL.

  • image

    Hubble · Jupiter and the Galilean moons

    Family portrait used as notation: four worlds held in one frame. NASA / ESA.

  • image

    Names of the wanderer

    Generated interpretation for this house. Five public names set as type on a plate. Not facsimiles of inscriptions, not portraits of gods.

  • image

    Iuppiter Optimus Maximus · generated stone

    Generated interpretation of a Capitoline dedication. Not a facsimile of a known inscription.

  • image

    ΖΕΥΣ · generated star field

    Generated interpretation. A wanderer, not a portrait of a god.

  • image

    MUL.BABBAR · generated tablet

    Generated interpretation of an Astronomical Diary. Cuneiform as texture, not a readable witness.

  • image

    木星 · generated ink

    Generated interpretation of the Wood Star as type. Not a historical treatise page.

  • image

    Bṛhaspati · generated palm-leaf

    Generated interpretation of a palm-leaf fragment. Not a surviving manuscript.