The Mysteries of Jupiter

This giant neighbor of ours still has secrets to unravel and much to inspire

Jupiter has always occupied a prominent place throughout human history. Long before we knew what stars and planets were, our ancestors already recognized them in the sky.

Imagine a tribe of hunter-gatherers a few millennia ago, on a summer night. Next to a wide and calm river, this small group of women and men come together in community to hear the stories of their elders. They are mystical plots in which nature, animals and celestial bodies relate in a magical and comforting way. And they point a finger at intriguing points of light. One of them is Jupiter.

Many centuries later, in Roman mythology, this planet has not lost its importance. By the way, Jupiter is the king of the Olympian gods and the grandfather of the founders of Rome, Romulus and Remus.

Let us now make another leap in the calendar to 1610. We are in Padua and, in one of the streets, the silence of the night is interrupted by the sound of a lute. This instrument is fingered by a professor at the University.

Born in Pisa, this intellectual took great pleasure in music and took the opportunity to spend time playing the melodies of his homeland, remembering his father, a virtuoso musician. This could just be a teacher like any other. However, his discoveries would make him famous and would contribute to rethinking man's place in the universe.

That night, he put down the instrument and picked up his telescope, which literally means “eye cannon”.

The vault was clear, so it was the right time to try this new instrument again. With him, Galileo had already observed the Moon. This time he pointed the telescope at Jupiter. To his surprise, he saw four new celestial bodies around the largest planet in the solar system.

We now know that what Galileo observed were four huge moons of Jupiter, later named Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto.

After all, Earth wasn't the only planet with satellites around it! We were not, we would definitely realize later, unique and much less the center of the universe.

Since those days in the XNUMXth century, astronomy has come a long way and has allowed us to unravel some of the biggest riddles of the cosmos.

But there is still a lot to discover. And this giant neighbor of ours still has secrets to unravel and much to inspire.

Already in the XNUMXth century, Gustav Holst, although with astrological inspirations, composed an unmissable symphonic work in which each planet has a song. The melody dedicated to Jupiter is absolutely majestic.

More recently, NASA sent the Juno space probe to the planet, which, on April 8 of this year, completed 50 orbits around it.

To commemorate this achievement, on the NASA website it is possible to download 50 fascinating images collected by Juno, which include photographs of Earth, Jupiter and its moons.

Discover more and be a “space explorer” through the website https://www.missionjuno.swri.edu/

 
 

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