Ananke
A captured moon of Jupiter about 28 km across, one orbit every 1.7 years, going the wrong way round.
Where it is right now
Ananke is in Cancer, 6.43 AU away.
Computed for 2 August 2026, 17:00 UTC, and recomputed at least hourly. This page is cached, so treat the line above as accurate to the hour rather than to the second. The map shows the live position.
Position from a Kepler propagation of the published elements below, accurate to about an arcminute.
Facts
Every line carries the source it came from.
- Mean radius
- 14 kmSource: IAU/NASA planetary satellite fact sheets
- Orbits
- Jupiter, 21,029,500 km out on averageSource: NASA/JPL Planetary Satellite Mean Elements
- Orbital period
- 1.7 yearsSource: NASA/JPL Planetary Satellite Mean Elements
- Orbit shape
- eccentricity 0.2380, inclined 147.60 degrees to the eclipticSource: NASA/JPL Planetary Satellite Mean Elements
- Discovered
- 1951 by S.B. NicholsonSource: NASA/JPL Planetary Satellite Discovery Circumstances
Physical size
- Mean radius
- 14.0 km
- Diameter
- 28 km across
Orbit
Elements are relative to Jupiter.
- Average distance from Jupiter
- 21.03 million km
- Closest and furthest
- 16.02 million km to 26.03 million km
- Eccentricity
- 0.2380, noticeably elliptical
- Inclination to Jupiter's reference plane
- 147.60 degrees
- Orbital period
- 623.1 days
- Longitude of ascending node
- 13.70 degrees
- Argument of periapsis
- 78.80 degrees
- Mean anomaly at J2000.0
- 271.70 degrees
Family
Orbits Jupiter.
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Catalog id ananke. 3,172 objects on the map, of which 171 are hand-authored with sourced facts.