Curated playlist
Moons of Jupiter
- Adrastea (moon)Adrastea, the tiny moon also catalogued as Jupiter XV, holds a distinction that sets it apart from every moon discovered before it. When David C. Jewitt and G. Edward Danielson spotted it in photographs taken by the Voyager 2 probe on the…
- Ganymede (moon)Ganymede, the largest moon in the entire Solar System, holds a magnetic field that no other moon anywhere is known to possess. It is bigger than the planet Mercury. Beneath its icy surface sits an ocean that may contain more water than all…
- Io (moon)Io has over 400 active volcanoes, more than any other object in the Solar System. Several of them fire plumes of sulfur and sulfur dioxide as high as 500 km above the surface. This innermost of Jupiter's four Galilean moons is slightly…
- Galilean moonsThe Galilean moons are four worlds circling Jupiter, each one large enough to rank among the biggest objects in the Solar System. On the 7th of January 1610, Galileo Galilei wrote a letter containing the first written mention of them. He…
- Europa (moon)Europa, the smallest of Jupiter's four Galilean moons, holds a secret beneath its frozen skin that has captivated scientists for decades. From Earth, you can spot it with a simple pair of binoculars, a pale dot circling the largest planet…
- Callisto (moon)Callisto hangs in the darkness beyond Jupiter's main radiation belt, orbiting at a distance of roughly 1.883 million kilometers from the planet it perpetually faces. It is the second-largest of Jupiter's moons, after Ganymede, and it ranks…
- Metis (moon)Metis, the innermost known moon of Jupiter, appeared in history as nothing more than a tiny dot. On the 4th of March 1979, astronomer Stephen P. Synnott spotted it in photographs captured by the Voyager 1 spacecraft. It was so small, so…
- Thebe (moon)Stephen P. Synnott found Thebe in images from the Voyager 1 space probe taken on the 5th of March 1979. This discovery happened while the spacecraft was making its flyby of Jupiter. Before this moment, no human had ever seen the moon. It…
- Moons of JupiterJupiter's moons number 115 at last count, and the tally is still climbing. That figure alone should give you pause. Earth has one moon. Mars has two. Jupiter has more than a hundred confirmed natural satellites, and astronomers believe…
- Amalthea (moon)On the 9th of September 1892, astronomer Edward Emerson Barnard spotted a small moon circling Jupiter and named it Amalthea. It was the fifth moon of Jupiter ever found, and it holds the third-closest orbit to the planet of any moon known…