Proceedings of the International Astronomical Union

Table of Contents - 2010 - Volume 6, Symposium S269 (Galileo's Medicean Moons: their impact on 400 years of discovery)  

Poster Papers

Theory of the rotation of the Galilean satellites

Benoît Noyellesa1

a1 University of Namur – Dept of Mathematics Rempart de la Vierge 8 – B-5000 Namur – Belgium and IMCCE (Paris Observatory, USTL, UPMC) – CNRS UMR 8028 77 avenue Denfert-Rochereau – 75014 Paris – France email: noyelles@imcce.fr

Abstract

As most of the natural satellites of the Solar System, the Galilean moons are since a long time assumed to be tidally locked in a spin-orbit synchronous resonance. Thanks to the mission Galileo, we now dispose of enough gravity data to perform 3-dimensional theories of the rotation of these satellites, in particular to model the departure from the exact synchronous rotation. We here present such theories depending on the interior model we consider, in highlighting some observable output data. Inverting them will give us information on the internal structure of these bodies.

Keywords

  • planets and satellites: general