today's Featured List/December 26, 2014

A montage of Jupiter and its four largest moons

This gives it the largest retinue of moons with reasonably secure orbits of any planet in the Solar System. The most massive of them, the four Galilean moons, were discovered in 1610 by Galileo Galilei and were the first objects found to orbit a body that was neither Earth nor the Sun. From the end of the 19th century, dozens of much smaller Jovian moons have been discovered and have received the names of lovers, conquests, or daughters of the Roman god Jupiter, or his Greek equivalent, Zeus. The Galilean moons are by far the largest and most massive objects in orbit around Jupiter, with the remaining 63 moons and the rings together comprising just 0.003 percent of the total orbiting mass. Eight of Jupiter's moons are regular satellites. The Galilean satellites would be considered dwarf planets if they were in direct orbit about the Sun. There are 17 recently discovered irregular satellites of Jupiter that have not yet been named. (This list is part of a featured topic: Jupiter.)