Kore Is So Small You Could Walk the Entire Equator in 1 Hour
Another reason you would not be able to see Kore from the surface of Jupiter is that it is very small. The equatorial diameter of Kore is only 1.25 miles. Compare that to Earth’s equatorial diameter of 7917.5 miles. Kore is 6371 times smaller than the Earth. The equatorial circumference of Kore is 3.9 miles. An average person could walk the entire circumference of the planet in about 1 hour.
Kore Moves Fast but Orbits Slowly
Kore moves at a fast velocity of 4985 miles per hour. Even though it is moving very fast, because it is so far away from Jupiter it has much more distance to travel, so it takes much longer to complete a full orbit around the planet. It takes 723 days to make a full orbit, which is almost two Earth years.
Kore’s Gravitational Pull is So Weak You Could Jump Right Off It
The gravitational pull of a moon or planet is related to the mass of the moon or planet. Kore’s mass is 14,986,684,330,972 kilograms, or 33,039,983,302,567 pounds. While 33 trillion pounds sounds quite heavy it is actually quite light for celestial bodies, so the moon has a very weak gravitational pull. The gravitational pull of Kore is 0.001 m/s2 compared to Earth’s gravitational pull of 9.8 m/s2. This means that any piece of space dust would be more likely to move right past Kore than land on Kore. That the moon does not have an atmosphere. This also means the escape velocity, how fast you would need to travel to leave Kore, is only 3.1 miles per hour. You wouldn’t need a rocket to leave Kore, you could just jump right off it.
Kore Was Discovered Quite Recently
On February 8, 2003, Scott S. Sheppard, David C. Jewitt and Jan T. Kleyna discovered the moon at the Mauna Kea Observatory in Hawaii. The location of the observatory is ideal for observing small moons because the observatory is at a high elevation where there is low humidity, and dark skies with little to no light pollution. This team has discovered many of Jupiter’s outer moons. Before advancements in telescope technology, objects this small were not observable, which is why many of Jupiter’s outer moons were discovered quite recently.
Kore Was Named After the Daughter of Zeus
In Greek mythology Zeus was the king of all the gods and goddess. The Roman name for Zeus was Jupiter, so many of Jupiter’s moons are named after Greek gods and goddesses. Kore was the daughter of Zeus and Demeter, the goddess of agriculture. Like her mother Kore is a goddess associated with agriculture and the underworld. Kore was abducted and then married to Hades, the god of the underworld, but she was allowed to leave the underworld in spring and summer. Kore is the personification the planting and harvest seasons. In the spring she arises from the underworld as new plants arise from the earth, and in the fall with the harvest she retreats to the underworld as plants decay into the earth. Kore as a name for the moon was also chosen because the name ends in “e.” Outer moons with retrograde orbits have to end in “e” according to the naming polices of the International Astronomical Union.
Kore Is a Piece of a Broken-Up Asteroid That Was Approximately 37 Miles Wide
Kore is one of a group of moons called the Pasiphae Group of Jupiter’s moons. There are 17 moons in this group and they are thought to have all originated from one asteroid that was originally 37 miles wide that broke apart from a collision. The collision happened after Jupiter was already formed so the asteroid that became these 17 moons was pulled into Jupiter’s gravitational field before the collision happened. The bulk of the original asteroid is a moon called Pasiphae, which is why these moons are called the Pasiphae Group.
Pasiphae Moons Are Different from Jupiter’s Other Moons
Kore, like the other moons in this group, is not a smooth round moon because a moon or planet needs to be very large, and have a significant amount of gravitational pull to become round. All the Pasiphae moons orbit in retrograde, which means they orbit opposite to the direction of Jupiter’s rotation. These moons also have orbits that are not circles, but are elliptical. The shape of orbits is called orbit eccentricity. A value of 0 would mean it is a perfect circle, while a value of 1 would mean it is the most elliptical orbit you can have. Kore orbital eccentricity is 0.3315 which means it has a somewhat elliptical orbit.