Course Documents -> Week 4 -> Virtual Galileo

This is a serious exercise. Please engage in it that way.

Enter your results into this table and publish when you are done

This is a simulation that comes as close as possible to what Galileo would have observed with his eye as a detector through a telescope.

You are given only a 24 hours clock (similar to Galileo) and from repeated observations of the systems you need to make the following measurements and record them in the worksheet to be published when your done.

    1. Estimate, as accurately as possible from the simulation the orbital periods of the inner and outer most moons (DO NOT LOOK THEM UP).

    2. Measure the amount of time the inner and outermost moons are spent in eclipse (that is they are directly in front of or behind Jupiter and therefore are not visible).

    3. By using any measuring device at your disposal, measure the radius of the orbits of the inner and outermost moons.

    4. From your data, tabulate the ratio of orbital periods between the outermost and innermost moon.

    5. From your data, tabulate the ratio of orbital distances between the innermost and outermost moons.

      http://homework.uoregon.edu/run/orbits