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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]
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]
In 1614, Marius published his work Mundus Iovialis (English: World of Jupiter) describing the planet Jupiter and its moons (he previously had published the discovery in 1611 in a local almanac [6]). Here he claimed to have discovered the planet's four major moons about a month before Galileo, who was naturally incensed. [7]
The timeline of discovery of Solar System planets and their natural satellites charts the progress of the discovery of new bodies over history. Each object is listed in chronological order of its discovery (multiple dates occur when the moments of imaging, observation, and publication differ), identified through its various designations (including temporary and permanent schemes), and the ...
In his book Mundus Iovialis ("The World of Jupiter"), published in 1614, Simon Marius, the court astronomer to the Margraves of Brandenburg-Ansbach, claimed to have discovered Io and the other moons of Jupiter in 1609, one week before Galileo's discovery. [7] According to Marius, he began observing the Jupiter system in late November 1609. [13]
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 ...
Metis / ˈ m iː t ə s /, also known as Jupiter XVI, is the innermost known moon of Jupiter.It was discovered in 1979 in images taken by Voyager 1, and was named in 1983 after the Titaness Metis, the first wife of Zeus and the mother of Athena.
Galileo had discovered the moons of Jupiter in 1609. [39] Scheiner argued that what appeared to be spots on the Sun were in fact clusters of small moons, thereby trying to deploy one of Galileo's own discoveries as an argument for the Aristotelian model.