Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
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 ...
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 Moon was volcanically active until 1.2 billion years ago, which laid down the prominent lunar maria. Most of the mare basalts erupted during the Imbrian period, 3.3–3.7 billion years ago, though some are as young as 1.2 billion years [63] and some as old as 4.2 billion years. [64]
Billions of years ago, a massive asteroid struck Ganymede, the largest moon orbiting Jupiter, shifting it on its axis, new research suggests.
At one time, it was thought that the mare basalts might represent a single stratigraphic unit with a unique age, but it is now recognized that mare volcanism was an ongoing process, beginning as early as 4.2 Ga [2] (1 Ga = 1 billion years ago) and continuing to perhaps as late as 1.2 Ga. [3] Impact events are by far the most useful for defining ...
The authors therefore think the moon formed around 4.51 billion years ago — more than 100 million years earlier than the commonly accepted estimate. ... Similar tidal heating is thought to occur ...
S/2003 J 1: Jupiter XLVII Sheppard, Jewitt, Kleyna, Fernández, Hsieh [37] [116] [117] (unnamed moon of Jupiter) S/2003 J 2 — Eupheme: S/2003 J 3: Jupiter LX (unnamed moon of Jupiter) S/2003 J 4 — i: 6 February 2003 p: 4 March 2003 Eirene: S/2003 J 5 — Jupiter LVII Helike: S/2003 J 6: Jupiter XLV i: 8 February 2003 p: 4 March 2003 Aoede ...
The density of cratering indicates an age of 4 billion years for the dark terrain, similar to the highlands of the Moon, and a somewhat younger age for the grooved terrain (but how much younger is uncertain). [63] Ganymede may have experienced a period of heavy cratering 3.5 to 4 billion years ago similar to that of the Moon. [63]