The Galileo spacecraft also revealed that the moon may have subsurface ocean of liquid water 100 km or more below the surface. The moon is made of around 60% rock/iron and 40% ice and may contain liquid water.Ĭallisto is composed of both rock and ice, in approximately equal measures, and there are also traces of water ice, carbon dioxide, silicates, and organic compounds on the surface. Scientists believe it is a dead world with no signs of geologic activity like plate tectonics or volcanism on its surface. The surface of Callisto is the most heavily cratered and also one of the oldest landscapes in our solar system. There are more craters on Callisto than any other object in the solar system However, it orbits the planet Jupiter and not the Sun, which is one of the primary factors in bodies being officially named as a planet (or dwarf planet). Since Callisto is larger than the dwarf planet Pluto and a similar size to Mercury you might think it could be considered a planet. Callisto isn’t a planet because it does not orbit the Sun They weren’t discovered prior to this because they cannot be seen with the naked eye and Galileo was the first person to actually design a telescope to be used to look at the sky and our vast universe. The four largest moons of Jupiter are known as the Galilean moons after Galileo, who discovered them in 1610. The Galilean moons were discovered in 1610 by Galileo Callisto is 99% the diameter of Mercury but only 1/3 the massĪt a diameter of 4,820.60 km, Callisto is only 58.40 km less than the planet Mercury, but the mass of the moon is only around a third of Mercury’s mass – 107,593,737,963,819 billion kg compared to 330,104,000,000,000 billion kg for Mercury. All of the moons of Jupiter are named for Greek mythological figures seduced by Zeus. There is also a Little Bear constellation which was the son of Zeus and Callisto. This constellation is also known as the Great Bear, or the Plough. His wife Hera then changed her into a bear before Zeus transformed her into a star and placed her in the sky as the constellation Ursa Major. Size of Callisto compared to Jupiter Side by side comparison of the size of Jupiter vs it’s moon Callisto Facts about Callisto The name of the moon comes from Greek mythology.Ĭallisto was a nymph who had an affair with the king of the gods, Zeus. Callisto orbits just beyond Jupiter’s main radiation belt and is the outermost of the Galilean moons – the four largest moons of Jupiter: Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto – discovered by Italian scientist Galileo in 1610.
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