Image of Jupiter and two of its largest moons.
Jupiter's largest moon's Io and Europa were first discovered by Galileo Galilei whilst he was making observations of the night sky with his own personal telescope in 1610. The mythological character Zeus was another representation of the planet Jupiter, therefore Galileo named the two moon's of Jupiter after two lovers of Zeus, Io and Europa. Galileo recognised that not all celestial bodies orbited the Earth, this realisation would change the course of history forever. At the time of his discovery most astronomers believed that the Earth was at the centre of the Universe, now atronomers had to consider that Earth was simply apart of a much bigger Universe than previously thought. 400 Years later we have discovered 69 moons that orbit Jupiter with the use of Space Probes like the one that captured this stunning image.
The image was captured by Nasa's JUNO Space Probe on September 1st 2017.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Roman Tkachenko.
Link to image.
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