Question

I'm struggling a bit with angular momentum.

Consider the satellites of the planets orbiting their respective host planets while those planets orbit the Sun. Galileo's observation of Jupiter's "moons" were an inspiration to the development of universal laws of motion and gravity that could describe not only effects here on Earth, but throughout the universe as well. Jupiter's satellite Europa has oceans under its ice and may even host life. It orbits the planet on a nearly circular path with a radius of 670,900 km and completes its orbit every 3.55 Earth days. Use Newton's universal law of gravitation to find the mass of Jupiter. Knowing Jupiter's mass, and that it orbits the Sun on the average (it has an elliptical orbit with an eccentricity of 0.05) at 7.8×108 km from the Sun in 11.86 years, what is its angular momentum? Compare Jupiter's orbital angular momentum to the angular momentum of the rotating Sun, which is a spinning sphere of radius 695,700 km and mass 1.99×1030 kg that completes a turn in 25 days (with respect to distant stars).

Answer 1