PEP 151
Lab 1
John Nugent
2/25/2022
Introduction
The objective of this lab was to calculate the mass of Jupiter through its moons. To
accomplish this, data of the moons was acquired and put into an excel sheet. The data used
was the semi-major axis and the orbital period. These values were then converted from m to km
and cubed for the semi-major axis (R^3), and days to seconds and squared for the orbital
period(T^2). With these values, a graph was able to be developed which showed the linear
trend and how the moons each laid near or on that trendline. The slope of the equation of the
trendline was then taken to calculate the mass of Jupiter from the equation (4
𝜋
^2/
𝐺
*M) = a, with
a being the slope of the line. This was done twice, one with 27 moons from Jupiter and then the
four of Galileo’s moon. The Galilean moons are highlighted.
Data:
The data used to complete this lab was taken from NASA’s “Jovian Satellite Fact Sheet”
(
https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/joviansatfact.html
). This data source gave the
semi-major axis data and orbital period data.
Figure 1: Data from 27 Moons of Jupiter
