Galilean moons

The Galilean moons (/ˌɡælɪˈleɪ.ən/),^[1] or Galilean satellites, are the four largest moons of Jupiter: Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto. They are the most readily visible Solar System objects after the unaided visible Saturn, the dimmest of the classical planets, allowing observation with common binoculars, even under night sky conditions of high light pollution. The invention of the telescope enabled the discovery of the moons in 1610. Through this, they became the first Solar System objects discovered since humans have started tracking the classical planets, and the first objects to be found to orbit any planet beyond Earth.

They are planetary-mass moons and among the largest objects in the Solar System; Titan and Triton, together with the Moon, are larger than any of the Solar System's dwarf planets. The largest of the four is Ganymede, which is the largest moon in the Solar System, and Callisto, both of which are either larger or almost as large as the planet Mercury, though not nearly as massive. The smaller ones, Io and Europa, are about the size of the Moon. The three inner moons — Io, Europa, and Ganymede — are in a 4:2:1 orbital resonance with each other. While the Galilean moons are spherical, all of Jupiter's remaining moons have irregular forms because of their weaker self-gravitation, in addition to being much smaller.

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] Galileo initially named his discovery the Cosmica Sidera ("Cosimo's stars") or Medicean Stars, but the names that eventually prevailed were chosen by Simon Marius. Marius discovered the moons independently at nearly the same time as Galileo, 8 January 1610, and gave them their present individual names, after mythological characters that Zeus seduced or abducted, which were suggested by Johannes Kepler in his Mundus Jovialis, published in 1614.^[4] Their discovery showed the importance of the telescope as a tool for astronomers by proving that there were objects in space that cannot be seen by the naked eye. The discovery of celestial bodies orbiting something other than Earth dealt a serious blow to the then-accepted Ptolemaic world system, a geocentric theory in which everything orbits around Earth.