Jupiter's Rings and Moons by Alex B.

Jupiter has a lot more to it than a huge orangey-red ball with a big dark red spot on it, lets take a look at it closely:

There are 67 known moons of Jupiter. Like Saturn, Jupiter has rings too, although they are not as visible as saturns. These rings were produced by micro meteoroids hitting the inner moons and blasting off dust, and this process must keep happening for Jupiter to keep having it’s rings.





A Picture of Jupiter and the Galilean Moons



A picture of Jupiter's ring system, mostly debris.

A shepherd’s moon is a moon that orbits through the rings of that planet. These moons create the “layers” in the rings, which are most easily visible on saturn.

This is actually a picture of Saturns Shepherd moons, but make it much easier to understand what a shepherd moon is.

Io is a very neat planet. It has volcanos, which erupt lava, dust, and gases into space. Io is also the most volcanically active object in the solar system. It is believed to have a metallic core. It’s surface is mostly made up of plains, although there are mountains that reach up to 9km high.

This is an image of Io. You can almost tell where the mountains and plains are!

Europa, another neat moon of Jupiter’s. It is the 15th largest object in our solar system, making it bigger than pluto! It also takes 3 and ½ earth days for it to revolve around Jupiter. It has a surface temperature of about 260 degrees fahrenheit at the equator. There is a theory about life on Europa as well, which is yet to be disproven, or proven for that matter. Some scientists believe this because it has hydrothermal vents similar to Earth’s. This could be a possible habitat for micro-organisms such as barteria.

Europa, Although not visible, has underground water that could harbor life.

A third moon of Jupiter is called Ganymede. It is the largest moon in the entire solar system. It’s surface is roughly half silicate rock and half water ice. It’s core is believed to be a liquid iron core. It also has a thin oxygen atmosphere, possibly containing O, O2, and O3.

It's hard to tell, but this surface has 50% ice water covering it!

Callisto, The final moon I will talk about, is 99% the size of mercury. It is spotted by the hundreds of craters from meteor impacts. This moon has a small atmosphere containing mostly carbon dioxide and has a relatively intense ionosphere. There is a high chance that there is a ocean inside of Callisto.

Callisto as you can tell is consistently bombarded by meteors.

The Galilean Moons are the four moons that were discovered between 1609 and 1610. These moons were named after the lovers of Zeus. These moons were the first objects to be found that didn’t orbit earth (or so they thought at the time) which leads to disprove the whole “the universe revolves around Earth” business.

A size visual of all the Galilean Moons compared Jupiter

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