Ganymede is the ninth-largest object in the Solar System, the largest without a substantial atmosphere. It has an iron-rich, liquid core, and an internal ocean that may contain more water than all of Earth’s oceans combined. The next planned mission to the Jovian system is the Jupiter Icy Moon Explorer. It is planned to enter orbit around GanyMede in 2022.
About Ganymede (moon) in brief
Ganymede is the ninth-largest object in the Solar System, the largest without a substantial atmosphere. It has a diameter of 5,268 km, making it 26% larger than the planet Mercury by volume. The next planned mission to the Jovian system is the European Space Agency’s Jupiter Icy Moon Explorer. It is planned to enter orbit around GanyMede in 2022. The discovery is credited to Galileo Galilei, the first to observe it, on January 7, 1610.. Its name was soon suggested by astronomer Simon Marius, after the mythological Ganymedi, a Trojan prince desired by Zeus, who carried him off to be the cupbearer of the gods. 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. The name was eventually chosen by Johannes Kepler.. The current name of the moon comes from the Latin word ganymeda, which means “to carry” or “to hold” in the hands of a king or queen, and means “he who holds the key to the heart of the universe” or the “heir to the power of the throne” or, in Latin, “the keeper of the secrets of the heart.”. The moon has an iron-rich, liquid core, and an internal ocean that may contain more water than all of Earth’s oceans combined. Its magnetic field is probably created by convection within its liquid iron core, but would show only as a local perturbation of the field lines.
The thin oxygen atmosphere that includes O, O2, and possibly O3. Atomic hydrogen is a minor atmospheric constituent. The cause of the light terrain’s disrupted geology is not fully known, but was likely the result of tectonic activity due to tidal heating. It may have an ionosphere associated with its atmosphere, but whether it has one is unresolved. The Voyager probes, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, refined measurements of its size, while Galileo discovered its underground ocean and magnetic field.. Chinese astronomical records report that in 365 BC, Gan De detected what might have been a moon of Jupiter, probably Gany mede, with the naked eye. Shi Shen and Gan De together made fairly accurate observations of the five major planets. 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’d discovered, and settled on “Medicean Stars” He considered “Venus of Jupiter” and “Jupiter of the Galilean satellites, and the Saturnus of the Jupiter and theMercury of Jupiter”, another nomenclature that never caught on. After flybys of all three icy Galilean moons, he once again tried to name them: “Quinamensius etiamensius” (Quinium etiamenius, Regis pueris filis filium, Regium, Trois filus filium)
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This page is based on the article Ganymede (moon) published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 06, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
