Discovery and Naming
On January 7, 1610, Galileo Galilei observed what he believed were three stars near Jupiter, including what turned out to be Ganymede, Callisto, and one body that turned out to be the combined light from Io and Europa; the next night he noticed that they had moved. On January 13, he saw all four at once for the first time, but had seen each of the moons before this date at least once. By January 15, Galileo came to the conclusion that the stars were actually bodies orbiting Jupiter. He claimed the right to name the moons; he considered "Cosmian Stars" and settled on "Medicean Stars".
The French astronomer Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc suggested individual names from the Medici family for the moons, but his proposal was not taken up. Simon Marius, who had originally claimed to have found the Galilean satellites, tried to name the moons the "Saturn of Jupiter", the "Jupiter of Jupiter" (this was Ganymede), the "Venus of Jupiter", and the "Mercury of Jupiter", another nomenclature that never caught on. From a suggestion by Johannes Kepler, Marius once again tried to name the moons:
... Then there was Ganymede, the handsome son of King Tros, whom Jupiter, having taken the form of an eagle, transported to heaven on his back, as poets fabulously tell ... the Third, on account of its majesty of light, Ganymede ...This name and those of the other Galilean satellites fell into disfavor for a considerable time, and were not in common use until the mid-20th century. In much of the earlier astronomical literature, Ganymede is referred to instead by its Roman numeral designation (a system introduced by Galileo) as Jupiter III or as the "third satellite of Jupiter". Following the discovery of moons of Saturn, a naming system based on that of Kepler and Marius was used for Jupiter's moons. Ganymede is the only Galilean moon of Jupiter named after a male figure — like Io, Europa, and Callisto, he was a lover of Zeus.
According to Chinese astronomical records, in 365 BC, Gan De discovered a moon of Jupiter with the naked eye, probably Ganymede.
Read more about this topic: Ganymede (moon)
Famous quotes containing the words discovery and, discovery and/or naming:
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—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)
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—Karl Kraus (1874–1936)
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—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)