What is europa.* ?
Europa is one of Jupiter’s Galilean moons, discovered by Galileo Galilei using a primitive telescope in 1610. These four moons, Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto, are by far Jupiter’s largest natural satellites. Europa is the smallest of the Galilean moons. At 3000 km in diameter, it is a bit smaller than the Earth’s Moon. Europa is named for a mistress of the god Zeus in Greek mythology. Jupiter, the planet Europa orbits, was named after the Roman name for Zeus. When Europa was discovered, it helped verify that planetary bodies aside from the Sun exert their own gravity. This helped replace the geocentric view of cosmology with the heliocentric Copernican version. Europa orbits Jupiter every three days or so and orbits at a distance from Jupiter a little less than twice the distance from the Earth to the Moon. Like the other Galilean satellites and our Moon, Europa is tidally locked to Jupiter, meaning the same side always faces it while the other side faces away. Europa’s appearance
