ORBITAL PERTURBATIONS OF THE GALILEAN SATELLITES DURING PLANETARY ENCOUNTERS

The Nice model of the dynamical instability and migration of the giant planets can explain many properties of the present solar system, and can be used to constrain its early architecture. Here, we study the survival of the Galilean satellites in the jumping-Jupiter model. This is an important concern because the ice-giant encounters, if deep enough, could dynamically perturb the orbits of the Galilean satellites and lead to implausible results. A more important constraint is represented by the orbital inclinations of the moons, which can be excited during the encounters and not appreciably damped by tides. We find that one instability case taken from Nesvorny & Morbidelli clearly does not meet this constraint. This shows how the regular satellites of Jupiter can be used to set limits on the properties of encounters in the jumping-Jupiter model, and help us to better understand how the early solar system evolved.