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In May 1664, using a 12 ft (3.7 m) refracting telescope, Hooke observed the Great Red Spot of Jupiter for two hours as it moved across the planet's face. In March 1665, he published his findings and from them, the Italian astronomer Giovanni Cassini calculated the rotation period of Jupiter to be nine hours and fifty-five minutes. [93]
In both the ancient Greek and Roman civilizations, Jupiter was named after the chief god of the divine pantheon: Zeus to the Greeks and Jupiter to the Romans. [19] The International Astronomical Union formally adopted the name Jupiter for the planet in 1976 and has since named its newly discovered satellites for the god's lovers, favourites, and descendants. [20]
Jupiter III Galileo [9] [10] discovered the Galilean moons. These satellites were the first celestial objects that were confirmed to orbit an object other than the Sun or Earth. Galileo saw Io and Europa as a single point of light on 7 January 1610; they were seen as separate bodies the following night. [11] Callisto: Jupiter IV o: 8 January 1610
Galileo also discovered that the Moon was cratered, that the Sun was marked with sunspots, and that Jupiter had four satellites in orbit around it. [13] Christiaan Huygens followed on from Galileo's discoveries by discovering Saturn's moon Titan and the shape of the rings of Saturn. [14]
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]
He discovered the four largest moons of Jupiter in 1610, which are now collectively known as the Galilean moons, in his honor. [85] This discovery was the first known observation of satellites orbiting another planet. [85]
When the Hubble Space Telescope set its sights toward the binary star system HD 106906, astronomers found a world that could resemble the long-sought Planet X. For the first time, astronomers are ...
Harding, who discovered this asteroid in 1804, proposed the name Juno and the use of a scepter topped with a star as its astronomical symbol. [48] The symbol for 4 Vesta was invented by German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss. Olbers, having previously discovered and named 2 Pallas, gave Gauss the honor of naming his newest discovery.