Animate the motion of Jupiter's Galilean satellites

galsat_animate() creates an animation showing the orbital motion of Jupiter's four largest satellites over time. The function starts from a user-specified time and advances in regular intervals to show how the moons move around Jupiter.

Usage

galsat_animate(
  year,
  month,
  day,
  hour,
  minute,
  duration_hours = 24,
  time_step_minutes = 5,
  pause_seconds = 0.05
)

Arguments

year: Type in the starting year (integer number from 0 to 3000).
month: Type in the starting month (integer number from 1 to 12).
day: Type in the starting day (integer number from 1 to 31).
hour: Type in the starting hour (integer number from 0 to 23).
minute: Type in the starting minute (integer number from 0 to 59).
duration_hours: Duration of the animation in hours (default 24).
time_step_minutes: Time step between frames in minutes (default 5).
pause_seconds: Pause between frames in seconds (default 0.05).

Value

Creates an animated plot showing the orbital motion of Jupiter's moons. Returns invisibly the final positions data frame.

Details

The animation uses the galsat() function internally to calculate satellite positions at each time step. Time is advanced by the specified interval (default 5 minutes) for each frame of the animation.

Examples

# Animate 2 hours with 10-minutes steps
galsat_animate(2025, 10, 6, 21, 50, duration_hours = 2, time_step_minutes = 10)