Sunday, September 20, 2009

NASA Astronomy PoTD


This is NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day, for Sept. 20, 2009. It's Ganymede, one of Jupiter's 63 confirmed moons, and the largest one in our entire Solar System. It's also twice the size of our own moon.

As you can see, it is pretty cool-looking. It was supposedly discovered by Galileo in 1610--he thought it was a star at the time, which is understandable considering the archaic equipment he worked with.

This photo was taken by the Galileo spacecraft (named in his honor), which orbited Jupiter from 1995 to 2003. Needless to say, if Galileo himself saw it, he'd probably shit his pants.

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