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S/2003 J 2 is a small moon of Jupiter that was discovered in 2003. It's one of many small moons orbiting Jupiter, which helps scientists understand the composition and history of the Jupiter system.
AI-generated from the Wikipedia summary — may contain errors.
Key facts
- Discovered by
- Scott S. Sheppard et al.
- Discovery site
- Mauna Kea Obs.
- Discovery date
- 5 February 2003
- Observation arc
- 21 years, 2022-09-02 (last obs)
- Earliest precovery date
- 11 December 2001
- Semi major axis
- 0.1373976 AU (20,554,390 km)
- Orbital period sidereal
- –1.65 yr (–602.02 d)
- Mean anomaly
- 114.43587 °
- Mean motion
- 0° 35 52.742 / day
- Inclination
- 149.20392° (to ecliptic )
- Longitude of ascending node
- 50.46976°
- Argument of perihelion
- 224.95527°
- Satellite of
- Jupiter
- Group
- Ananke group
- Mean diameter
- ≈ 2 km
- Albedo
- 0.04 (assumed)
- Absolute magnitude h
- 16.73 (59 obs)
via Wikipedia infobox
~1 min read
Encyclopedic overview
Jupiter LXXIII, provisionally designated S/2003 J 2, is a retrograde irregular satellite of Jupiter. The moon was discovered on 5 February 2003 by a team of astronomers from the University of Hawaii led by Scott S. Sheppard and David C. Jewitt, and was later announced on 4 March 2003. It was initially thought to be Jupiter's outermost known moon until recovery observations disproved this in 2020.
Jupiter LXXIII is about 2 km (1.2 mi) in diameter, and orbits Jupiter at an average distance of about 20,600,000 kilometres (0.138 AU) in roughly 600 days, at an inclination of around 149° to the ecliptic and with an eccentricity of 0.28. The moon was initially assumed to be part of the Pasiphae group, but is now known to be part of the Ananke group after it was recovered in 2020.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “S/2003 J 2” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.