Themisto
Moon· orbits Jupiter
Themisto — moon of Jupiter.
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Key facts
Radius
4.5 km
Orbit around Jupiter
130 Earth days
Science
Physical
- Radius (estimated)
- 4.5 km
- Sized from its brightness assuming a dark (~0.04) surface — never resolved, so the true diameter (~9 km) could be off by a factor of two.
Orbit around Jupiter
- Distance from Jupiter
- 7,407,427 km
- From JPL orbital elements
- Orbital period
- 130.3 days
- From JPL orbital elements
- Eccentricity
- 0.2734
- From JPL orbital elements
- Inclination to the J2000 equator
- 21.20 °
- From JPL orbital elements
Radiation & temperature
- Insolation
- 0.035 S⊕ · 4% of the sunlight Earth receives
- Computed from the distance to the Sun (inverse-square; Earth's sunlight = 1), before any atmosphere.
Discovery & history
- By
- C.T. Kowal, E. Roemer (1975), S.S. Sheppard, D.C. Jewitt, Y.R. Fernandez, G. Magnier (2000)
Themisto was discovered in 1975, 2000 by C.T. Kowal and colleagues. Jupiter's moons are named after lovers, daughters and descendants of the god Jupiter (the Greek Zeus). Beyond its discovery and naming, little more about it has been individually recorded.
Images
No resolved image of this moon has been released: telescopes and passing spacecraft have recorded it only as a faint point of light.