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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]
A well-known feature of Jupiter is the Great Red Spot, [103] a persistent anticyclonic storm located 22° south of the equator. It was first observed in 1831, [ 104 ] and possibly as early as 1665. [ 105 ] [ 106 ] Images by the Hubble Space Telescope have shown two more "red spots" adjacent to the Great Red Spot.
Ganymede orbits Jupiter at a distance of 1,070,400 kilometres (665,100 mi), third among the Galilean satellites, [26] and completes a revolution every seven days and three hours (7.155 days [39]). Like most known moons, Ganymede is tidally locked, with one side always facing toward the planet, hence its day is also seven days and three hours. [40]
Jupiter has surpassed Saturn with the record for the planet with the most moons in our solar system. The gas giant has a total of 92 confirmed moons, according to new observations by astronomers.
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 ...
Europa / j ʊ ˈ r oʊ p ə / ⓘ, or Jupiter II, is the smallest of the four Galilean moons orbiting Jupiter, and the sixth-closest to the planet of all the 95 known moons of Jupiter. It is also the sixth-largest moon in the Solar System .
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 .
Two of the new moons orbit in the same direction as the planet rotates, which requires a name that ends in -a; the other three travel in the opposite direction and will be given names that end in ...