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Galileo [9] [10] discovered the Galilean moons. These satellites were the first celestial objects that were confirmed to orbit an object other than the Sun or Earth. Galileo saw Io and Europa as a single point of light on 7 January 1610; they were seen as separate bodies the following night. [11] Callisto: Jupiter IV o: 8 January 1610 p: 13 ...
From top to bottom: Io, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto. The Galilean moons (/ ˌɡælɪˈleɪ.ən /), [1] or Galilean satellites, are the four largest moons of Jupiter: Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto. They are the most readily visible Solar System objects after Saturn, the dimmest of the classical planets; though their closeness to bright ...
A natural satellite is, in the most common usage, an astronomical body that orbits a planet, dwarf planet, or small Solar System body (or sometimes another natural satellite). Natural satellites are colloquially referred to as moons, a derivation from the Moon of Earth. In the Solar System, there are six planetary satellite systems containing ...
A 2012 study on the depletion of zinc isotopes on the Moon found evidence for volatile depletion consistent with the giant-impact origin for Earth and the Moon. [8] In 2013, a study was released that indicated that water in lunar magma is indistinguishable from that in carbonaceous chondrites and nearly the same as that of Earth in isotopic ...
Eventually, new moons were discovered also around Uranus starting in 1787 by Herschel, [23] around Neptune starting in 1846 by William Lassell [24] and around Mars in 1877 by Asaph Hall. [25] Further apparent discrepancies in the orbits of the outer planets led Percival Lowell to conclude that yet another planet, "Planet X", must lie beyond ...
Quaoar has one known moon, Weywot, which was discovered by Brown in February 2007. [20] Both objects were named after mythological figures from the Native American Tongva people in Southern California. Quaoar is the Tongva creator deity and Weywot is his son.
One of the earliest-discovered possible depictions of the Moon is a 3,000 BCE rock carving Orthostat 47 at Knowth, Ireland. [8] [9] Lunar deities like Nanna/Sin featuring crescents are found since the 3rd millenium BCE. [10] Though the oldest found and identified astronomical depiction of the Moon is the Nebra sky disc from c. 1800–1600 BCE ...
Styx (moon) Styx is a small natural satellite of Pluto whose discovery was announced on 11 July 2012. It was discovered by use of the Hubble Space Telescope, and is the smallest of the five known moons of Pluto. It was imaged along with Pluto and Pluto's other moons by the New Horizons spacecraft in July 2015, albeit poorly with only a single ...