The India Post Team, Chandigarh:Dr. Sandeep Sahijpal, Department of Physics shared Image of Jupiter along with the Galilean moons taken by the Panjab University Department of Physics, Chandigarh. The four major satellites of the Jupiter, namely, Ganymede, Europa, Io and Callisto were discovered by Galileo around 1610 AD.
Galileo is considered to be the first astronomer to have observed celestial bodies using a telescope. Prior observations were made with the naked eyes. Based on the orbital motion of the four moons around Jupiter, the central bigger celestial body, Galileo corroborated the heliocentric theory against the much prevalent geocentric theory at that time.
Aristarchus (~300 BC) is considered to be the first proponent of the heliocentric theory where the planets go around the sun. Ptolemy (~100 AD) in his great compilations of the scientific works completely ignored the Aristarchus hypothesis and supported the more famous geocentric theory (the entire universe going around the Earth) at that time. Copernicus revived the heliocentric theory around 1500 AD, that represents the correct description of our solar system. Galileo’s observations of the four moons of the Jupiter confirmed that the celestial bodies in the universe need not have to go around the Earth. The Jupiter along with its moons present an analogy to the sun, the central massive body, with its the orbiting planets.
The three moons Ganymede, Europa and Callisto are considered to made of silicates with thick crust of ice. The possibility of water beneath the ice has been realized. Io hosts some of the most massive volcanoes in our solar system. The gravitational tidal interaction due to the massive Jupiter and its satellites are considered to be the heat source for the volcanic activities.
In the present image of Jupiter you can identify the famous red spot. It is at the 9:00 clock position, on the dark band. The red spot is an active anticyclone in the Jupiter’s atmosphere that has been on for at least ~350 years. It was probably discovered by Cassini around 1665 AD.
In our future observations, we will focus on detailed observations of the moons orbiting Jupiter and possibly demonstrate the Kepler’s law based on these observation.