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VSOP87 (and the subsequent VSOP2000 and VSOP2013) provide reasonably accurate planetary positions while still maintaining a small file size compared to the Chebyshev polynomial files.

VSOP includes our moon, but has anyone created something similar for other planets' moons (such as Jupiter's Io, Saturn's Titan, and Uranus' Ariel)?

I'm thinking about trying to create something like this and wanted to check that it hadn't already been done.

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  • $\begingroup$ Can you try putting a little more detail in your questions. $\endgroup$ – Juka Nov 6 '14 at 2:15
  • $\begingroup$ @Juka What sort of additional details would you like? $\endgroup$ – barrycarter Nov 6 '14 at 11:32
  • $\begingroup$ I'm guessing you mean moons around planets in the solar system other than the Earth, rather than moons around exoplanets (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exomoon)? $\endgroup$ – AstroFloyd Jul 16 '16 at 13:32
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Yes, there are several I know of for the Galilean moons, less so for other satellites. One very good place to start is from the same organization that created the VSOP series, now called IMCCE. Here is a link to their satellite ephemeris. According to the Explanatory Supplement to the Astronomical Almanac, most of the other moons of Jupiter behave to chaotically to create a similar theory and numerical integration is required to produce accurate results.

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  • $\begingroup$ This is really nice, thanks! $\endgroup$ – barrycarter Aug 19 at 16:03

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