January 12, 2012

With Galileo And The Texans

This is awesome, I just wrote in the last post (January 12, 2012) :

The previous time, Io was not visible. This time it was close to Jupiter and quickly disappeared as it orbited in front of Jupiter.

Then I just read:

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.

I just thought it was cool that he saw the fourth moon about the same time of year we did when we "discovered it"--- January 11, 2012... what 402 years later.

It was funny too because I had told Richard that I thought the moons might have been stars.  When the fourth appeared I knew it was a moon... but was still unsure of the others as they looked so far away from Jupiter.

Oh wait! And actually January 7th was the night of the Texan's game when we saw them for the first time... exactly coinciding with Galileo.

1 comment:

Kim said...

That is sooo cool!