![]() Who discovered the four largest Jupiter moons? The first four discovered Jovian satellites, however, were spotted back in the 17th century using a homemade telescope. Most of them are small, less than 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) in diameter, and were discovered between the 1970s and 1990s by modern automated spacecraft. So far, 79 Jupiter moons have been found astronomers may find more in the future. ![]() Ganymede: the largest moon in the Solar System.Who discovered the four largest Jupiter moons?.Which of them is the biggest in the Solar System, and which is potentially habitable? Let’s find out. The first four of them – the Galilean moons – were discovered more than 400 years ago. Nat Comdoi: 10.Being the largest planet in the Solar System, Jupiter has the second-largest number of moons. Aeolian sediment transport on Io from lava-frost interactions. “In the end, in planetary science, that is what we are trying to do.”Ī paper on the findings was published today in the journal Nature Communications. Lujendra Ojha, a researcher in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Rutgers University. “Work like this really allows us to understand how the cosmos works,” said Dr. The spacing of the crests and the height-to-width ratios they observed were consistent with trends for dunes seen on Earth and other planets. Once the researchers devised a mechanism by which the dunes could form, they looked to photos of Io’s surface taken by the Solid State Imager on NASA’s Galileo spacecraft for more proof. When lava flows into sulfur dioxide beneath the moon’s surface, its venting is dense and fast moving enough to move grains on Io and possibly enable the formation of large-scale features like dunes. McDonald and colleagues used mathematical equations to simulate the forces on a single grain of basalt or frost and calculate its path. The surface of Io is a mix of black solidified lava flows and sand, flowing ‘effusive’ lava streams, and ‘snows’ of sulfur dioxide.ĭr. “This work tells us that the environments in which dunes are found are considerably more varied than the classical, endless desert landscapes on parts of Earth or on the fictional planet Arrakis in ‘ Dune’,” Dr. “We have proposed, and quantitatively tested, a mechanism by which sand grains can move, and in turn dunes could be forming there.”Ĭurrent scientific understanding dictates that dunes, by their nature, are hills or ridges of sand piled up by the wind.Īnd planetary researchers in previous studies of Io, while describing its surface as containing some dune-like features, concluded the ridges could not be dunes since the forces from winds on Io are weak due to the moon’s low-density atmosphere. George McDonald, a postdoctoral researcher in the Earth and Planetary Sciences Department at Rutgers University. “Our studies point to the possibility of Io as a new ‘dune world’,” said Dr. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Rutgers University. Potential dunes on Jupiter’s moon Io: the dark material (lower left) is recently emplaced lava flows, while the repeated, line-like features dominating the image are potential dunes the bright, white areas may be newly emplaced grains as the lava flows vaporize adjacent frost.
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