dipper@utastro.UUCP (Debbie Byrd) (11/10/86)
The largest planet in the solar system -- after this. November 10 The Moon and Jupiter The bright object near the moon tonight is the planet Jupiter -- the largest planet of the solar system and the fifth planet outward from the sun. Jupiter speeds through space about half as fast as Earth does. Our planet travels at eighteen miles a second through space -- Jupiter moves along at eight miles per second. Last September the Earth caught up to Jupiter on the inside track as the planets race around the sun. Now the Earth is speeding ahead as Jupiter drops behind. Like the Earth -- which has the moon for a companion -- Jupiter doesn't travel alone around the sun. The gas giant is accompanied by sixteen moons -- all unique -- some as much like planets as the planets themselves. The four largest jovian moons are called the Galilean satellites after the astronomer Galileo, who lived nearly five hundred years ago. If you had a telescope tonight, you could easily see the Galilean moons. And if you looked tonight -- and then again tomorrow night -- you'd find that the positions of the Galilean moons had changed relative to Jupiter. Chart the changes in their positions over a period of time -- and you would find, like Galileo did, that these satellites orbit Jupiter. Galileo used his observations of the jovian moons to confirm the theory that the planets of the solar system all revolve around the sun -- not the Earth. Even without a telescope it's easy to spot the planet Jupiter tonight -- with the help of the moon. Jupiter is the bright object about four moon diameters away on the dome of the sky -- a giant world with many moons of its own. Script by Diana Hadley. (c) Copyright 1985, 1986 McDonald Observatory, University of Texas at Austin
dgary@ecsvax.UUCP (D Gary Grady) (11/11/86)
>. . . Galileo used his observations of the jovian moons to confirm >the theory that the planets of the solar system all revolve around the >sun -- not the Earth. >Script by Diana Hadley. >(c) Copyright 1985, 1986 McDonald Observatory, University of Texas at Austin I guess this proves that people parrot what they read without bothering to engage the brain. What Galileo demonstrated with the Jovian satellites was merely that not all bodies orbited the Earth. While this gave credence to the Copernican view (and to the Tychonean, for that matter), there is obviously no way he could "confirm" helicentrism with this. If anything, it might be argued as evidence that the solar system revolves about Jupiter! (Of course, we wouldn't call it the solar system then :-). -- D Gary Grady (919) 286-4296 USENET: {seismo,decvax,ihnp4,akgua,etc.}!mcnc!ecsvax!dgary BITNET: dgary@ecsvax.bitnet