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Europa (Jupiter II), the second of the four Galilean moons, is the second closest to Jupiter and the smallest at 3121.6 kilometers in diameter, which is slightly smaller than Earth's Moon. The name comes from a mythical Phoenician noblewoman, Europa , who was courted by Zeus and became the queen of Crete , though the name did not become widely ...
Irregular moons are probably minor planets that have been captured from surrounding space. Most irregular moons are less than 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) in diameter. The earliest published discovery of a moon other than Earth's was by Galileo Galilei, who discovered the four Galilean moons orbiting Jupiter in 1610. Over the following three ...
The discoveries of Io and the other Galilean satellites of Jupiter were published in Galileo's Sidereus Nuncius in March 1610. [1] While the Jovian moons he discovered would later be known as the Galilean satellites, after himself, he proposed the name Medicea Sidera (Medicean Stars) after his new patrons, the de'Medici family of his native ...
The largest of the Galilean moons with a radius of 2,620 kilometers (1,630 mi), Ganymede is larger than Earth's moon, the dwarf planet Pluto or the planet Mercury. [209] It is the largest of the moons in the Solar system that are characterized by large amounts of water ice, which also includes Saturn's moon Titan, and Neptune's moon Triton ...
The sizes and masses of many of the moons of Jupiter and Saturn are fairly well known due to numerous observations and interactions of the Galileo and Cassini orbiters; however, many of the moons with a radius less than ~100 km, such as Jupiter's Himalia, have far less certain masses. [5]
In addition, he named his discovered four moons of Jupiter the "Medicean Stars," in honor of the four royal Medici brothers. [3] This helped him receive the position of Chief Mathematician and Philosopher to the Medici at the University of Pisa. [9] Ultimately, his effort at naming the moons failed, for they are now referred to as the "Galilean ...
Ganymede is the only Galilean moon of Jupiter named after a male figure—like Io, Europa, and Callisto, he was a lover of Zeus. In English, the Galilean satellites Io, Europa and Callisto have the Latin spellings of their names, but the Latin form of Ganymede is Ganymēdēs, which would be pronounced / ˌ ɡ æ n ɪ ˈ m iː d iː z /. [38]
With a Galilean telescope, the observer could see magnified, upright images on the Earth—what is commonly known as a spyglass—but also it can be used to observe the sky, a key tool for further astronomical discoveries. Galileo showing the Doge of Venice how to use the telescope (fresco by Giuseppe Bertini) Ole Rømer at work