Despina is catalogued in this registry as a moon, held in the frame of Neptune, from Planetary satellites — mean elements (JPL SSD).
Registry id JPLSAT_805 ·
source layer jplsats ·
provenance PROCESSED — derived deterministically from source catalogues (unit, frame and epoch conversions, cross-source reconciliation) — no value invented
Open Despina in the live scene → The scene composes a position for any date and is where a figure becomes a picture. It downloads the whole catalogue first: measured against the built product, an object outside the core resolves after about 16 s over a local network and about 147 s over a 4 Mbit link, having transferred roughly 70 MB. If you cannot wait that long, this page is the answer.
The registry keeps every source's value rather than choosing one and discarding the rest. If you quote a figure below, quoting it alone would hide a real disagreement between catalogues.
tagged.radius: the registry shows one value and keeps 1 other — 90000 (GCAT worlds)| Quantity | Value | Uncertainty | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Radius | 74000 m (74 km) | ± 10000 m (10 km) (1σ) | Planetary satellites — mean elements (JPL SSD) ⚖ 1 source disagree — 90000 m (GCAT worlds) |
Each row carries its own uncertainty and its own source. Where a row says no uncertainty is published, that is what the catalogue says — it is not a claim that the value is exact.
These are the sourced elements. This page does not print a position: a position is a function of time, and a single one dated to the bake would be stale the moment it was read. The registry composes a position for any date, past or future, from these elements — open the scene below and set the clock.
| Quantity | Value | Uncertainty | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Semi-major axis | 5.25×10^7 m (52500 km) | no published uncertainty in this registry | Planetary satellites — mean elements (JPL SSD) |
| Eccentricity | 0 | no published uncertainty in this registry | Planetary satellites — mean elements (JPL SSD) |
| Inclination | 0.503025 rad (28.8212°) | no published uncertainty in this registry | Planetary satellites — mean elements (JPL SSD) |
| Longitude of ascending node | 0.856132 rad (49.0528°) | no published uncertainty in this registry | Planetary satellites — mean elements (JPL SSD) |
| Argument of periapsis | 5.862027 rad (335.8694°) | no published uncertainty in this registry | Planetary satellites — mean elements (JPL SSD) |
| Mean anomaly at epoch | 2.183407 rad (125.1°) | no published uncertainty in this registry | Planetary satellites — mean elements (JPL SSD) |
Elements are expressed in the frame of
NEPTUNE at epoch
2000-01-01 12:00:00 UTC (JD 2451545). Gravitational parameter of the primary:
6.8330238×10^15 m³/s². Semi-major axis in astronomical units uses the
IAU 2012 definition (1 au = 1.495978707×10^11 m exactly).
| Kind | moon |
|---|---|
| Origin | natural |
Mean orbital elements at epoch [JPL SSD sats/elem, NEP097], referred to the Laplace plane (pole R.A. 299.7° Dec. 42.7°), rotated to the J2000 ecliptic; nodal/apsidal precession not modelled. Mean radius [JPL SSD phys_par].
Reproduced as the source wrote it. Author-year citations link to their DOI where one is registered.
These are absences in the catalogues aggregated here, not measurements of zero, and not statements that the quantity is unknown to science:
| Database | Planetary satellites — mean elements (JPL SSD) |
|---|---|
| Authority | JPL Solar System Dynamics — Planetary Satellite Mean Elements + Physical Parameters |
| Address | https://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sats/elem/ |
| Licence | Public domain (U.S. Government work, NASA/JPL-Caltech) |
| How it entered | RAW snapshot via scripts/ingest-jplsats.ts (fetched 2026-07-10T09:49Z) |
| Snapshot | 2026-07-10 |
| Coverage | 437 moons of Mars→Pluto beyond the 22 curated majors; mean elements at epoch referred to the ecliptic/Laplace/planet-equator plane per row, rotated to the J2000 ecliptic (Horizons-anchored conversion); nodal/apsidal precession not modelled; radius only where JPL publishes one (24); the 22 curated-major rows are not discarded — their a/e/i + radius reconcile onto the curated moons as corr/alt (erase none) |
This database remains the property of its owners and is reused under its own licence. If you quote a value from this page, name that database alongside SolarSystemRegistry.org.