Each of Jupiter's other 91 official moons has a diameter greater than 0.6 mile (1 kilometer) — but only 57 have names, and just eight have regular, nearly round orbits.

On this date, Jan. 7, 1610, astronomer Galileo Galilei, with a homemade telescope, noticed three points of light near Jupiter. Initially believing they were distant stars, Galileo’s repeated ...

Aside from being the biggest of Jupiter's 95 moons, Ganymede is best known for its axial tilt and deep furrows. These characteristics—particularly the rivets that lend Ganymede its unusual ...

Ice moons such as Jupiter’s Europa and Saturn’s Enceladus are currently at the forefront of the search for extraterrestrial life, as it is believed that beneath their thick icy shells there ...

If conditions are clear, anyone with a pair of binoculars or a telescope may even be able to pick out details, such as Jupiter’s four largest moons — Ganymede, Callisto, Io and Europa.The four ...

Once Clipper arrives at Jupiter, it will orbit the gas giant 80 times over the course of four years, making 49 Europa flybys, as close as 16 miles from the surface, to collect data from pole to pole.

A spacecraft that will study one of Jupiter’s moons launched Monday on a journey of more than six years to discover if the moon has the ability to support life. The solar-powered spacecraft ...

A dozen new moons have been found orbiting Jupiter, including 11 normal moons and one “oddball” moon, according to Carnegie Institution for Science.

One of Jupiter’s 95 known moons, Europa is almost the size of our own moon. It’s encased in an ice sheet estimated to be 10 miles to 15 miles or more (15 kilometers to 24 kilometers) thick.

On March 2, 1979, a paper in Science ruminated on Io’s strange orbit. Because of the positions and orbits of neighboring moons, Io’s orbit is elliptical rather than circular. And when Io is ...

One of Jupiter’s 95 known moons, Europa is almost the size of our own moon. It's encased in an ice sheet estimated to be 10 miles to 15 miles or more thick.