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Galileo's sketches of the Moon from Sidereus Nuncius. Sidereus Nuncius contains more than seventy drawings and diagrams of the Moon, certain constellations such as Orion, the Pleiades, and Taurus, and the Medicean Stars of Jupiter. Galileo's text also includes descriptions, explanations, and theories of his observations.
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]
Artist's concept of Galileo passing near Jupiter's small inner moon Amalthea. Although Galileo 's main mission was to explore the Galilean moons, it also captured images of four of the inner moons, Thebe, Adrastea, Amalthea, and Metis. Such images were only possible from a spacecraft; to Earth-based telescopes they were merely specks of light ...
Starting with Galileo's first orbit, the spacecraft's camera, the Solid-State Imager (SSI), began taking one or two images per orbit of Io while the moon was in Jupiter's shadow. This allowed Galileo to monitor high-temperature volcanic activity on Io by observing thermal emission sources across its surface. [68]
Galileo concludes his remarks by criticising those who doggedly adhere to Aristotle's views, and then, drawing together all he has said about sunspots, the moons of Jupiter, and Saturn, ends with the first explicit endorsement of Copernicus in his writings:
Galileo observed the phases of Venus's appearance with the telescope and was able to confirm Kepler's first law of planetary motion and Copernicus's heliocentric model, of which Galileo was an advocate. [75] Galileo claimed that the Solar System is not only made up of the Sun, the Moon and the planets but also comets. [76]
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Galileo's drawings of Jupiter and its "Medicean Stars" from Sidereus Nuncius. In 1610, Italian polymath Galileo Galilei discovered the four largest moons of Jupiter (now known as the Galilean moons) using a telescope. This is thought to be the first telescopic observation of moons other than Earth's.