What are the Moons of Jupiter?
Jupiter, the largest planet in the Solar System and fifth from the Sun, possesses at least sixty-three moons. The most famous and by far the largest are the Galilean moons, Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto, discovered by the Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei in 1610 with his 32X magnifying telescope. The observation of the Galilean moons provided crucial evidence that celestial bodies could orbit something other than the Earth, providing a blow to the heliocentric theory of the Solar System. In 1611, Galileo even took his telescope to Rome to show the moons to the influential philosophers and mathematicians of the Jesuit Collegio Romano, but despite this, was accosted for his radical ideas for the next decade and eventually put on house arrest by the Inquisition. Even today, when sixty-three of Jupiter’s satellites are known, the Galilean satellites remain among the most beautiful, unique, and widely studied. There is Ganymede, at 5262 km in diameter, the largest moon in the Solar S
Jupiter, the largest planet in the Solar System and fifth from the Sun, possesses at least sixty-three moons. The most famous and by far the largest are the Galilean moons, Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto, discovered by the Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei in 1610 with his 32X magnifying telescope. The observation of the Galilean moons provided crucial evidence that celestial bodies could orbit something other than the Earth, providing a blow to the heliocentric theory of the Solar System. In 1611, Galileo even took his telescope to Rome to show the moons to the influential philosophers and mathematicians of the Jesuit Collegio Romano, but despite this, was accosted for his radical ideas for the next decade and eventually put on house arrest by the Inquisition.
