Which satellite did Galileo miss?
Image courtesy of Anthony Wesley. Checkout
his site for more images.
Above one sees an image of Jupiter with, Io, one of the four
Galilean moons, in transit across the planet.
When Galileo first pointed his telescope at Jupiter, on 7th January 1610,
he only saw 3 of its four largest moons. See his
letter
to the Prince of Venice for the image and the
translation
of the lower half.
Which one of the four major satellites was missing?
This can now be easily established using a program called
Stellarium which allows
you to simulate the solar system as if you had your own planetarium.
If you can't wait to download this code and find out the answer to this
intriguing mystery for yourself, you should read this
paper for the surprising conclusion.
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 Updating...
Ralph Buchholz, May 28, 2014, 9:48 AM
Ralph Buchholz, May 28, 2014, 9:57 AM
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