Europa
A cracked ice shell over a salt ocean holding perhaps twice the water of all Earth's seas.
Where it is right now
Europa is in Cancer, 6.30 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 astronomy-engine's VSOP87-derived series, accurate to about an arcsecond.
Facts
Every line carries the source it came from.
- Mean radius
- 1560.8 kmSource: NASA/JPL Planetary Satellite Physical Parameters
- Orbits
- Jupiter, 671,100 km out on averageSource: NASA/JPL Planetary Satellite Mean Elements
- Orbital period
- 3.53 daysSource: NASA/JPL Planetary Satellite Mean Elements
- Orbit shape
- eccentricity 0.0090, inclined 0.50 degrees to Jupiter's Laplace planeSource: NASA/JPL Planetary Satellite Mean Elements
- Discovered
- 1610 by GalileoSource: NASA/JPL Planetary Satellite Discovery Circumstances
- Ice shell
- 15 to 25 km thick over an ocean 60 to 150 km deepSource: NASA Europa Clipper mission science
Physical size
- Mean radius
- 1,561 km
- Diameter
- 3,122 km across
Orbit
Elements are relative to Jupiter.
- Average distance from Jupiter
- 671,100 km
- Eccentricity
- 0.0090, almost perfectly circular
- Inclination to Jupiter's reference plane
- 1.76 degrees
- Orbital period
- 3.5 days
- Longitude of ascending node
- 331.59 degrees
- Argument of periapsis
- 255.68 degrees
- Mean anomaly at J2000.0
- 345.40 degrees
Family
Orbits Jupiter.
Claim this body
$49 once, and it stays yours
Io, Europa, Titan, Triton and the rest. Sixteen exist, ever.
A claim is a listing on this map. Not an IAU designation. Permanent, with one disclosed exception for dead links: see the terms.
Catalog id europa. 3,172 objects on the map, of which 171 are hand-authored with sourced facts.