THE MASS OF JUPITER FROM OBSERVATIONS OF GALILEAN SATELLITES

N. BAILEY
United States Naval Academy, Physics Department

ABSTRACT

Based upon Kepler’s Third Law of Planetary Motion, the mass of a

central body can be calculated from information about the orbits of
its satellites. In this experiment, the four Galilean moons of Jupiter
were observed over the course of a month in order to determine
the semi-major axes and periods of their orbits. This information
was used to calculate the mass of Jupiter.

1. INTRODUCTION from his own observations and those

Jupiter, king of the planets, has
been known in the skies for all of
recorded history. Its moons,
however, are a more recent
discovery. The four brightest, most
prominent moons of Jupiter—Io,
Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto—are
known as the Galilean moons
because they were first observed by
Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei.
When using his new telescope,
Galileo noticed four bright “stars”
around Jupiter and, to his surprise,
they moved relative to Jupiter like no
star should have moved (Drake
1978). Galileo published his findings
and his conclusion that these bright
“stars” were in fact planets orbiting
around Jupiter in 1610 (Kepler
1610).
Johannes Kepler, a prominent
astronomer of the seventeenth
century, had already stated his
empirical laws in his published
works, and he was delighted with
Galileo’s publication because it
supported his findings (Kepler 1610).
Kepler’s three laws were formulated
of Tycho Brahe. Kepler’s third law is
of importance here because it relates
two measurable aspects of Jupiter’s
satellites—the semi-major axis of
their orbit and their period.
Newton’s law of universal gravitation
is the missing piece of the puzzle.
The first corollary of Proposition VIII
of Newton’s Principia was ground
breaking because it showed how
physical information about objects in
a system can be gleaned from their
motion by deriving the general form
of Kepler’s third law (Chandrasekhar
1995).
Rearranging Newton’s derivation
of Kepler’s third law gives a
straightforward equation for the
calculation of the mass of a central
object, Equation 1, where a is the
semi-major axis, T is the period of
the orbit, and G is the universal
gravitational constant. This is true
provided that the central mass is
sufficiently greater than the mass of
the orbiting object so that the
reduced mass of the system is
equivalent to the mass of the central
object.
 4π 2 a 3
M = (1)
GT 2
In order to determine the mass
of the central body accurately,
precise measurements of the semi-
major axis and period of the orbiting
object are needed.
2. METHOD AND EQUIPMENT
The Galilean moons of Jupiter
can be seen with the aid of only
binoculars, but something more
accurate is needed to take consistent
and precise data. For our images,
we used the telescope at the United
States Naval Academy observatory, a
refracting telescope with a Clark
handmade lens of 7¾” aperture.
The focal length of the telescope is
2953 mm. In order to record data, a
Santa Barbara Instruments ST-10
CCD with a pixel size of 6.8 microns
was attached to the telescope.
During each observing session,
ten images of Jupiter and all of its
visible moons were taken with dark
exposures incorporated by the CCD
program. These darks were taken
before each image exposure in order
to subtract out the thermal
properties of the detector. Then
twenty flats were taken of a blank
area of sky. These twenty flats were
combined into one median flat and
divided by their mean pixel intensity
value in order to create a normalized
median flat. Each image was divided
through by this normalized median
flat before analysis.
Our team observed every clear
night possible beginning on the
evening of September 29, 2008.
The observations continued for four
weeks, the last being taken on the
evening of October 22, 2008, for a
total of 15 different data sets.
3. OBSERVATIONS
The 15 data sets were split by
the team and reduced down to true
distances using the Image Reduction
and Analysis Facility program. For
each normalized image for the
observation set, the center of Jupiter
and the positions of the moons were
found in pixels. From this, relative
distances between the moons and
Jupiter were found. The arcseconds
of the sky projected onto each pixel
of our telescope and CCD was .
47492, as calculated in Figure 1,
based on the pixel size of the CCD
and the focal length of the telescope.
1 rad
plate _ scale =
focal _ length mm
1 rad
=
2953 mm
= .0003386 rad * 206265 arc sec
mm rad
= 69.85 arc sec
mm
arc sec = 69.85 arc sec * .0068 mm
pix mm pix
= .47492
Figure 1. Calculation of plate scale in
arcseconds per pixel.
Once the separations of the
moons were known in seconds of
arc, the small angle approximation
(Equation 2) could be used in
conjunction with the known distance
to Jupiter to find the actual physical
separations of the moons, where s is
the true distance in the sky, θ is the
Date Callisto +/- Io +/- Europa +/- Ganymede +/-
0.054 1512829 3540 125427 3540 -525910 3540 -885363 3540
3.013 -254262 5095 277778 5095 -612149 5095 1029849 5095
3.962 -880971 3814 -365800 3975 737997 4029
5.192 -1453174 8619 377175 8619 632293 8619
6.004 -1735285 4104 -372980 4104 -868972 4104
7.022 -1804738 3686 208469 4120 -549559 4012 -984447 4283
8.017 -1606038 2023 461048 1740 -362534 1914
13.096 1317503 3206 -362310 3206 -827041 3206
14.083 1686384 4310 257260 4310 -585932 4310 -980856 4310
15.013 1748523 4600 495880 4600 -348122 4600
16.179 1820676 3571 -187048 3571 345507 3571 512813 3571
20.054 -411827 4310 -452912 4310 -702488 4310
21.042 -1026575 1917 329905 3618 -620937 2079 -1073559 1325
22.958 -1750011 2276 236034 2186 599238 2344 140972 3561
23.042 -1761072 2029 130445 2976 555385 2119 211999 2074
Table 1. Observational data. Date from 0000 30Sep2008 (UT), distances in km. Negative
values indicate a position east relative to Jupiter.

projected angle in radians and d is

the distance from the Earth to 4. ANALYSIS AND RESULTS
Jupiter. The Earth-Jupiter distance
was referenced from the In order to determine the semi-
Astronomical Almanac (2007). major axis and period of each moon,
we modeled the data for each orbit
s = θd (2) as a sine wave as shown in Figures
2-5. Using LoggerPro software, we
were able to determine best fit
The dates and times of the
values for the semi-major axis and
observations were converted to
period of each moon’s orbit. We
decimals dates beginning at midnight
were able to determine a margin of
Universal Time on the morning of
error from how well the data
September 30, 2008. The distances
matched up to the fit line, which was
of each moon, in kilometers, for
important because the error resulting
each observed night were compiled
from our observations was
together into Table 1 for the team to
negligible, as shown by the plotted
analyze. Negative numbers were
error bars. The best fit values for
used to represent distances to the
each orbit and the calculated mass
east of Jupiter and positive numbers
of Jupiter from those parameters are
to represent distances to the west.
shown in Tables 2-5. We also
Error was determined in pixels by
calculated the statistical coefficients
each group as they reduced the data
of determination, R2, to evaluate the
in IRAF, converted into kilometers,
closeness of the fits, as seen in
and carried forward through the
Table 6.
calculations.
 Callisto

Observed Data Line Fit to Data

2.5
Millions

2.0

1.5
Distance from Jupiter (km)

1.0

0.5

0.0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25
-0.5

-1.0

-1.5

-2.0

-2.5
Day

Figure 2. Callisto.

a (m) (1.8412 ± 0.0142) x 109

T (s) (1.4485 ± 0.0049) x 106
M (kg) (1.7602 ± 0.0425) x 1027
Table 2. Callisto.

Io

0.5
Millions

0.4

0.3

0.2
Distance from Jupiter (km)

0.1

0.0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25
-0.1

-0.2

-0.3

-0.4

-0.5

-0.6
Day

Figure 3. Io.

a (m) (4.1460 ± 0.1340) x 108

T (s) (1.5275 ± 0.0016) x 105
M (kg) (1.8072 ± 0.1753) x 1027
Table 3. Io.
 Ganymede

Observed Data Line Fit to Data

1.5

Millions
1.0
Distance from Jupiter (km)

0.5

0.0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

-0.5

-1.0

-1.5
Day

Figure 4. Ganymede.

a (m) (1.0548 ± 0.0248) x 109

T (s) (6.2049 ± 0.0231) x 105
M (kg) (1.8034 ± 0.1278) x 1027
Table 4. Ganymede.

Europa

Observed Data Line Fit to Data

0.8
Millions

0.6

0.4
Distance from Jupiter (km)

0.2

0.0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25
-0.2

-0.4

-0.6

-0.8
Day

Figure 5. Europa.

a (m) (6.9660 ± 0.1474) x 108

T (s) (3.0481 ± 0.0066) x 105
M (kg) (2.1526 ± 0.1370) x 1027
Table 5. Europa.
 Callisto 0.980
Ganymede 0.709
Europa 0.978
Io 0.983
Table 6. Coefficients of determination.
Using the amplitudes and periods
of the fitted sinusoid and Equation 1,
a mass for Jupiter was determined
for each moon with an uncertainty
based on how well the sine curve fit
our data. These were then averaged
together to arrive at a combined
value for Jupiter’s mass. However,
we realized that some of the masses
were likely to be more accurate due
to how well the individual sine
curves fit each moon. Our final
mass of Jupiter was calculated as an
average of the four moons’
calculated value weighted by their
correlation coefficient. Using this
method we found the mass of
Jupiter to be (1.8864 ± 0.1753) x
1027 kg.
5. DISCUSSION
There were a few difficult spots
during this experiment. The
observations themselves had to be
well taken, which meant that the
CCD had to be in focus. The
extension of the barrel to achieve
good focus was tricky to find
because we couldn’t observe how
the image changed as we moved it.
Instead we had to move the barrel,
attempt a picture, see how it turned
out and adjust accordingly. Once
the focal length was established,
however, we were able to mark it
and use the same length every time
under the assumption that the
ambient temperature was the same.
Getting observations every
night for a good length of time was
vital to successful data.
Unfortunately the weather does not
always cooperate with astronomical
desires, and so many nights of data
were lost in this way. This is
especially problematic for the two
moons closest to Jupiter, Io and
Europa, whose positions change
drastically from night to night. Some
of the most useful data points in the
sine fitting were the last two data
points, which we took 3 hours apart.
In order to get a better fit and more
accurate results, many such spaced
observations would be crucial.
When we first collected all of
our data, there was an odd problem.
The periods evaluated for each of
the four moons were consistent with
previous values, but the semi-major
axes were too short by a factor of
about 10% for every moon. We
examined our process and our data
in order to determine the source of
what appeared to be a systematic
error, but nothing could account for
such a big discrepancy. Inclination,
which we had assumed to be
negligible, was calculated and found
to not be a factor. Our math was
correct, and each part of the team
had independently arrived at semi-
major axes which were uniformly too
short. After much searching, it was
discovered that a parameter of the
CCD, the microns per pixel, had been
misreported, which introduced an
error of a factor of 1.1146 which
perfectly accounted for our
discrepancy. After this was applied,
all of our measured values became
consistent with accepted values.
 6. CONCLUSION

We conclude that the mass of

Jupiter is (1.8864 ± 0.1753) x 1027
kg. This value concurs with 1.8988 x
1027 kg, the accepted value of the
mass of Jupiter from previous
experiments as reported by the
Astronomical Almanac (2007).

Much acknowledgement and many

thanks go to my partner, Cody
Forsythe, who worked with me for all
our assigned observations, data
reduction, and analysis, and whose
help was invaluable. Thanks go to
the rest of the team as well: N.
Backstrom, S. Lozano, C. Navarro, K.
Devers-Jones, J. Walker, and E.
Knebel.

REFERENCES

Chandrasekhar, Subrahmanyan
1995, Newton’s Principia for the
Common Reader, Clarendon Press,
New York, 373.

Drake, Stillman 1978, Galileo at

Work: His Scientific Biography,
University of Chicago Press, Chicago,
146-156.

Kepler, Johannes 1610, Conversation

with Galileo’s Sidereal Messenger,
Johnson Reprint Corporation, New
York, 14.

The Astronomical Almanac for the

Year 2008, Nautical Almanac Office
United States Naval Observatory
2007, Washington, E4, E29.