Himalia group

The Himalia group is a group of outer moons of Jupiter, which are similar in their web properties. The group can be attributed to four moons:

  • Leda
  • Himalia
  • Lysithea
  • Elara

The members of the group are among the irregular moons whose orbits are highly eccentric and a significant inclination (inclination ) towards the local Laplace plane have. The Laplace levels of these moons fall within this distance from the planet roughly with the orbital plane of Jupiter together, but are caused by external influences - especially by Saturn - by up to 1.5 ° tilted against them. As with all outer moons of Jupiter are the orbital elements of these moons strong temporal fluctuations.

The orbits of the moons of Himalia group are prograde ( prograde ): The moons orbit the planet in the same direction as the direction of rotation. The group members have distances from their host planet 11 to 12 million km, which corresponds to about 22 % of the Hill radius ( stable orbits are possible for prograde moons to a maximum of 47 % of the Hill radius).

Outer moons of Jupiter with these properties received since 1976 a period ending on a name, whereas the name of retrograde ( decreasing ) irregular moons of Jupiter end with an e ( regular moons are always prograde ).

The Himalia group is named after its largest members, which is also the fifth largest of all the moons of Jupiter. The group was possibly from a single asteroid that was captured by Jupiter's gravity and broke due to the action of tidal forces into pieces.

  • Jupiter moon
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