Featured planetary moon
Callisto
An ancient, cratered archive at the edge of Jupiter’s major moons.
Callisto’s surface preserves impact history on a vast scale. It orbits beyond the strongest part of Jupiter’s radiation environment experienced by the inner Galilean moons and shows less evidence of recent resurfacing.
- Orbit representation
- Representative mean elements
- Surface
- derived map
Reference measurements
The numbers that shape this world
- Mean radius
- 2,410.3 km
- Mean orbital distance
- 1,882,700 kmSemi-major axis around the parent body.
- Orbital period
- 16.69 days
- Eccentricity
- 0.007
- Inclination
- 0.3°Local Laplace plane from the JPL pole
- Rotation
- Tidally locked
World portrait
A record written in impacts
Where Io and Europa are continually transformed, Callisto appears comparatively old and stable. Its heavily cratered face becomes the central visual and scientific contrast.
System geometry
Callisto in motion around Jupiter
Callisto travels at a mean orbital distance of 1,882,700 km and completes a circuit in 16.69 days. Its eccentricity of 0.007 and 0.3° inclination are read against Local Laplace plane from the JPL pole. Synchronous rotation keeps the same hemisphere broadly oriented toward the parent body.
Representation notes
What Explore is showing
JPL fitted mean elements describe general orbit shape and orientation; they are not an accurate ephemeris.
Reviewed official global map prepared as a 1K display texture. Small no-data seams were cleaned without inventing large-scale landmarks; final seam, pole and lighting review remains device-dependent.
Provenance