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Ganymede, or Jupiter III, is the largest and most massive natural satellite of Jupiter, and in the Solar System. Despite being the only moon in the Solar System with a substantial magnetic field , it is the largest Solar System object without a substantial atmosphere.
A montage of Jupiter and its four largest moons (distance and sizes not to scale) There are 95 moons of Jupiter with confirmed orbits as of 5 February 2024. [1] [note 1] This number does not include a number of meter-sized moonlets thought to be shed from the inner moons, nor hundreds of possible kilometer-sized outer irregular moons that were only briefly captured by telescopes. [4]
The Galilean moons are named after Galileo Galilei, who observed them in either December 1609 or January 1610, and recognized them as satellites of Jupiter in March 1610; [2] they remained the only known moons of Jupiter until the discovery of the fifth largest moon of Jupiter Amalthea in 1892. [3]
The solar system's largest moon, Ganymede, which orbits the largest planet, Jupiter, was hit by an asteroid four billion years ago that shifted the gas giant's satellite on its axis, new research ...
Gliding past the planet Jupiter, the Cassini spacecraft captured this view of active Io, Jupiter's third largest moon, with the gas giant as a backdrop, in 2001. The Cassini spacecraft itself was ...
The four largest moons of Jupiter all orbit within the magnetosphere, which protects them from solar wind. [70]: 69 The volcanoes on the moon Io emit large amounts of sulfur dioxide, forming a gas torus along its orbit. The gas is ionized in Jupiter's magnetosphere, producing sulfur and oxygen ions.
The images provide new insights into the chemical composition of two of Jupiter’s moons.
Io (/ ˈ aɪ. oʊ /), or Jupiter I, is the innermost and second-smallest of the four Galilean moons of the planet Jupiter.Slightly larger than Earth's moon, Io is the fourth-largest moon in the Solar System, has the highest density of any moon, the strongest surface gravity of any moon, and the lowest amount of water by atomic ratio of any known astronomical object in the Solar System.