Telescopes and Detectors
Telescopes and the Discovery of the Universe
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Galileo discovered that Jupiter:

  1. is a bright wandering star
  2. shines like a star
  3. is a planet with four moons
  4. has over sixty moons

Jupiter has a set of moons

Until the 1600's, Jupiter was simply a bright, slow-moving, wandering star.

Galileo discovered that it was a sphere like the Moon and Venus. It shines because it reflects light from the Sun. It os a planet like Earth, that has not one, but four orbiting moons.

The moons Galileo observed are now known to be largest of Jupiter's many moons - over sixty have been catalogued. The four that Galileo discovered are called the Galilean moons: Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto.