Miss Jupiter not and are 4 Galileian satellites that shine near that crescent tonight (2024)

FAQs

What are the 4 Galilean moons of Jupiter? ›

The names Marius proposed for the moons in 1614 (suggested to him by a fellow astronomer, Johannes Kepler) are the ones we use today — Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto.

Shown from left to right in order of increasing distance from Jupiter, Io is closest, followed by Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto. The order of these satellites from the planet Jupiter helps to explain some of the visible differences among the moons.

Io is the innermost of the four Galilean moons, orbiting closest to Jupiter. Next out is Europa, then Ganymede, and then Callisto. Jupiter is the most massive object in the Solar System other than the Sun itself, and has a very strong gravitational pull.

Orbit and Rotation

Callisto is about 1.8 times farther from Jupiter than Ganymede, 2.8 times farther than Europa and 4.5 times farther than Io, Jupiter's closest large moon. Jupiter and its moons orbit about 484 million miles (778 million kilometers) from our Sun.

Jupiter has many moons, but only four are large and bright enough to be seen easily through a telescope. As they orbit Jupiter, Earth gets to view various interactions between them and the planet's globe. A common event is a transit, which is when a moon appears to cross Jupiter's disc.

The most massive of the moons are the four Galilean moons: Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto, which were independently discovered in 1610 by Galileo Galilei and Simon Marius and were the first objects found to orbit a body that was neither Earth nor the Sun.

Galileo famously chronicled the four moving dots near Jupiter and surmised that they were orbiting the distant world. While Jupiter has well over 80 discovered moons as of September 2023, these brightest four are called the “Galilean Moons” - Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto.

Callisto, the fourth Galilean moon, farthest from Jupiter, represents the most heavily cratered object in the solar system.

74 Jupiter's Satellites

They are Callisto, Europa, Ganymede, and Io, with Io having the closest orbit to Jupiter. And Ganymede is larger than planet Mercury.

The Galilean satellites

In order of increasing distance from the planet, these satellites are called Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto, for figures closely associated with Jupiter in Greek mythology.

Which of the 4 Galilean moons orbits furthest from its surface? ›

Callisto is the outermost of the four Galilean moons of Jupiter. It orbits at a distance of approximately 1,880,000 km (26.3 times the 71,492 km radius of Jupiter itself).

The Galilean moons (/ˌɡælɪˈleɪ. ən/), or Galilean satellites, are the four largest moons of Jupiter: Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto.

Ganymede reveals past tectonic movement of the ice surface which required partial melting of subsurface layers. Europa reveals more dynamic and recent movement of this nature, suggesting a thinner ice crust. Finally, Io, the innermost moon, has a sulfur surface, active volcanism and no sign of ice.

If Ganymede rotated around the Sun rather than around Jupiter, it would be classified as a planet. Ganymede has a very distinct surface with bright and dark regions. The surface includes mountains, valleys, craters and lava flows.

Jupiter's Galilean moons are its four largest satelilites Io, Callisto, Europa and Ganymede. They're known as the Galilean moons because the first recorded observation was by Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei in 1610.

Venus is a cloud-swaddled planet named for a love goddess, and often called Earth's twin.