What is the story behind the asteroid, Europa?
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52 Europa, diameter 289 km, was discovered on February 4, 1858 by H. Goldschmidt. It is named after Europa, one of Zeus's conquests in Greek mythology.\n\nEuropa may be the seventh largest known asteroid (it cannot currently be ranked relative to 3 Juno) and is very dark in color. It belongs to the Hygiea asteroid family.\n\nIt should not be confused with Jupiter's moon Europa.\n\nNasa is preparing plans for a possible mission to Europa ( the MOON) that would put a lander on the surface. It has even been suggested that a mission could be devised that would drill through the ice layer and release a probe into the liquid underment. This is the "hydrobot" concept.\n\nWater or ice? Liquid or slushy or frozen solid? Ever since the Voyager spacecraft missions flew through the Jupiter system in 1979, planetary scientists have wondered about the layer of ice surrounding the second moon of Jupiter.\n\nEuropa's ice surface makes it one of the brightest, and smoothest, objects in our solar system.\n\nRecent Galileo spacecraft images have provided evidence that Europa had a liquid ocean underneath the frozen crust sometime in its history, but it is not clear if this ocean still exists. Of the various explanations proposed by scientists, most scenarios of Europa's evolution have the water layer freezing solid earlier in its history. The moon's surface is -260° F, which could freeze an ocean over several million years. But scientists think that the warming caused by a tidal tug of war with Jupiter and neighboring moons could be keeping large parts of the ocean liquid.
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Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and is the largest one in the solar system. If Jupiter were hollow, more than one thousand Earths could fit inside. It also contains more matter than all of the other planets combined. It has a mass of 1.9 x 1027 kg and is 142,800 kilometers (88,736 miles) across the equator. Jupiter possesses 28 known satellites, four of which - Callisto, Europa, Ganymede and Io - were observed by Galileo as long ago as 1610. Another 12 satellites have been recently discovered and given provisional designators until they are officially confirmed and named. There is a ring system, but it is very faint and is totally invisible from the Earth. (The rings were discovered in 1979 by Voyager 1.) The atmosphere is very deep, perhaps comprising the whole planet, and is somewhat like the Sun. It is composed mainly of hydrogen and helium, with small amounts of methane, ammonia, water vapor and other compounds. At great depths within Jupiter, the pressure is so great that the hydrogen atoms are broken up and the electrons are freed so that the resulting atoms consist of bare protons. This produces a state in which the hydrogen becomes metallic. \nColorful latitudinal bands, atmospheric clouds and storms illustrate Jupiter's dynamic weather systems. The cloud patterns change within hours or days. The Great Red Spot is a complex storm moving in a counter-clockwise direction. At the outer edge, material appears to rotate in four to six days; near the center, motions are small and nearly random in direction. An array of other smaller storms and eddies can be found through out the banded clouds. \n\nAuroral emissions, similar to Earth's northern lights, were observed in the polar regions of Jupiter. The auroral emissions appear to be related to material from Io that spirals along magnetic field lines to fall into Jupiter's atmosphere. Cloud-top lightning bolts, similar to superbolts in Earth's high atmosphere, were also observed. \n\nJupiter's Ring\nUnlike Saturn's intricate and complex ring patterns, Jupiter has a simple ring system that is composed of an inner halo, a main ring and a Gossamer ring. To the Voyager spacecraft, the Gossamer ring appeared to be a single ring, but Galileo imagery provided the unexpected discovery that Gossamer is really two rings. One ring is embedded within the other. The rings are very tenuous and are composed of dust particles kicked up as interplanetary meteoroids smash into Jupiter's four small inner moons Metis, Adrastea, Thebe, and Amalthea. Many of the particles are microscopic in size. \n\nThe innermost halo ring is toroidal in shape and extends radially from about 92,000 kilometers (57,000 miles) to about 122,500 kilometers (76,000 miles) from Jupiter's center. It is formed as fine particles of dust from the main ring's inner boundary 'bloom' outward as they fall toward the planet. The main and brightest ring extends from the halo boundary out to about 128,940 kilometers (80,000 miles) or just inside the orbit of Adrastea. Close to the orbit of Metis, the main ring's brightness decreases. \n\nThe two faint Gossamer rings are fairly uniform in nature. The innermost Amalthea Gossamer ring extends from the orbit of Adrastea out to the orbit of Amalthea at 181,000 kilometers (112,000 miles) from Jupiter's center. The fainter Thebe Gossamer ring extends from Amalthea's orbit out to about Thebe's orbit at 221,000 kilometers (136,000 miles). \n\nJupiter's rings and moons exist within an intense radiation belt of electrons and ions trapped in the planet's magnetic field. These particles and fields comprise the jovian magnetosphere or magnetic environment, which extends 3 to 7 million kilometers (1.9 to 4.3 million miles) toward the Sun, and stretches in a windsock shape at least as far as Saturn's orbit - a distance of 750 million kilometers (466 million miles). \n\nJupiter Statistics \nMass (kg) 1.900e+27 \nMass (
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Titan, the largest moon of Saturn, and after Ganymede, the second-largest moon in the Solar System. Discovered by Christiaan Huygens, a Dutch astronomer on March 25th, 1655 about 45 years later than Galielo's discovery of 7th January 1610.\n\nTwo generations later suggests to me that the church did inhibit research. Telescopes existed, and the thought that if Jupiter had moons, then Saturn might have them, too, must have occurred to the astronomers of the day, Perhaps it inhibited publication more than research? Another factor to consider is that Holland was also less under the sway of Roman Catholicism than Italy had been for Galileo.\n\nHuygens named his discovery simply Saturni Luna (Latin for "Saturn's moon", which can also be written Luna Saturni) (De Saturni Luna observatio nova, 1656; XV). Later, Giovanni Domenico Cassini named the four moons he discovered (Tethys, Dione, Rhea and Iapetus) Lodoicea Sidera ("the stars of Louis") to honour king Louis XIV.\n\nThe name "Titan" and the names of all seven satellites of Saturn then known come from John Herschel (son of William Herschel, discoverer of Mimas and Enceladus) in his 1847 publication Results of Astronomical Observations made at the Cape of Good Hope, wherein he suggested the names of the Titans, sisters and brothers of Cronos (the Greek Saturn), be used.\n\nJupiter was the Roman equivalent of the Greek Zeus, and Saturn the Roman equivalent of Zeus' father, Cronos (Zeus' mother was Rhea, the name given to another of Saturn's moons).\n\nThe Huygens spacecraft and Cassini probe that explored Titan in 2004 were named after these two astronomers.
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Go to the following website to get the latest news on the Pluto - Kuiper Belt mission:\n\nhttp://pluto.jhuapl.edu/
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Sure, the main theory right now is that of a large meteoritic impact, first seriously proposed back in 1980. It fits the requirement of a rapid and sudden kill-off event. What killed the dinosuars? Well the immediate effect of a large asteroid impact would be global firestorms. The ejecta reaches low earth orbit and then superheats as it re-enters the atmosphere. This pretty much covers much of the planet in fire. Other bad things happen, toxic metals in the air and water, dust obscuring the sun, many bad things, but the main killing factor is the global fire storm.\n\nAs scientists we really like the asteroid impact theory as it is supported with the following evidence:\n\n1. The boundry layer in which the extinction occured is ultra-rich in the element irridum. These high concentrations of irridium are not found on earth, but match very well to those of meteoritic samples that we have. This boundry layer with irridium has been found all over the globe.\n\n2. Shocked quartz deposits have been found in the regions near central to lower north america, indicating a large shockwave propagated across the area\n\n3. Tiny glass beads have been found in the same regions, with larger ones more concentrated near the Yucatan. Thes glass bead are most closely related to objects we call Tektites, a glass that forms from meteorite impact ejecta. (cool science thing: you can get tektites for a couple dollars at any rock shop!)\n\n4. Tsunami deposits from that era have been found in the gulf of mexico region, indicating massive tidal wave events\n\n5. A crater caused an impact large enough to cause all of these things has been found right on the coast of the Yucatan, centered on Chicxulub, and dating to the right time period.
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You can find more information on this claim here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_NT7\n\nBasically it was just a media hype cause by the near-Earth minor planet being ranked with an above 0 rating on the Palermo Impact Hazard Scale.\n\nQuoted from wikipedia: \n"On August 1, 2002, the object was removed from the list of objects that present a threat, at least for the next 100 years."\n\nNothing to worry about really, it's just one of those things the media picks up on and blows it out of proportions.
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Someone on Carolyn Porco's team in the Space Science Institute in Boulder Colorado. They are the team responsible for analysing images that come back from the Cassini probe, which is currently orbiting Saturn and its moons. Carolyn Porco is the main mission scientist, is an expert on Saturn and has been involved in this research for decades. The discovery is still tentative, though. They  \n\nWilliam Herschel discovered Enceladus, not evidence of water - that was only announced a few weeks ago on March 6.
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Saturn: The planet Saturn was named after the Roman god of agriculture and the harvest. Saturn is the second largest planet in our solar system (Jupiter is the largest). The planet Saturn is less dense than water - it will float on water. \nFacts:\n\nDiameter: 120,536 km, 9.4 Earth diameters \n\nAverage Distance from Sun: 1.427 billion km, 9.53 AU (astronomical units) \n\nLength of Day: 10 hours 40 minutes \n\nLength of Year: 29.46 Earth Years \n\nNumber of natural satellites: 30 \n\nPlanetary ring system: Yes \n\nAverage temperature: ~134 K (-139 C) Atmospheric composition: Mostly hydrogen and helium. \n\nEccentricity of orbit 0.053\n\nInclination of equator to orbit 26.73°\n\nInclination of orbit to ecliptic 2.48 ° \nGalileo was the first to see Saturn in 1610 through a telescope. 1655- Christian Huygens (Dutch) used a better telescope and suggested that it was surrounded by a thin-flattened ring. Edge on almost impossible to see. Later on discovered that the rings were really system of rings. 1675 Domenico Cassini discovered a dark division in the rings. The Cassini division is a gap about 4500 km wide that separates the outer A ring from the brighter B ring. 1838- Johann Franz Encke discovered a 270 km wide division in the outer A ring\n\nA, B, & C rings are not uniform but consist of hundred upon hundred of closely space bands or ringlets. This is a picture of the F-ring about 100 km wide. Narrowness is due to the gravitational forces exerted by 2 small satellites\n \n\nRings\n\n \n\nThe storm is the white arrowhead shape in the middle of Saturn - pointing to the right. The diameter of this storm is about the diameter of the Earth. \n\n\n\n\n\n\nThe beautiful blue in the photograph is caused by the multiple pictures that have been combined. Blue is not the natural color of Saturn. White in the clouds are white ammonia ice crystals.\nSaturn’s Moons\n1 planet sized satellites\n6 moderate sized satellites\n? tiny satellites\n\nTitan\nA dark cloud band is visible near Titan's north pole, the equator has a wide band of clouds as well. Titan is larger than the planets Mercury and Pluto. The thick haze/atmosphere of Titan. Picture was taken by Voyager 1 in 1980. Titan is the only moon in our solar system with an atmosphere. Titan's atmosphere might even be thicker than the atmosphere of Earth. It consists mainly of nitrogen. \n \n\nTethys: The area on the right hand side of this photo is heavily cratered and brighter/whiter than the rest of Tethys as seen on the left hand side. Tethys has much more craters at the upper half of this picture than at the lower half. The craters at the bottom half were flooded with volcanic lava, making that half smoother. The smallest object you can see on this photograph is about 5 kilometers across.\n\n Tethys\n\n\nRhea: Icy crust. 1600 km in diameter. Along with Iapetus are the largest and most distant from Saturn.\n\n Rhea\n\nMimas: Photograph by Voyager 1 in 1980. Covered with impact craters of all sizes. The largest impact crater on this picture is more than 100 kilometers in diameter. It has a high central peak. \n\n\n Mima\n\nPhoebas: The bright spot in the picture on the left is a mountain. The two bright spots in the photograph on the right are mountain ridges. \n\n\n\n\nJupiter\n\n\nStats\n\nDistance from Sun- 5.203 AU (4.95-5.45AU)\n\nEccentricity of orbit 0.048\n\nOrbital period- 11.86 years\n\nRotational period- equatorial 9 hours 50 min - internal 9 hours 55 min\n\nInclination of equator to orbit 3.12°\n\nInclination of orbit to ecliptic 1.30 °\n\nDiameter 142,984 Km = 11.209 Earth diameters\n\nMass- 1.899 x 1027 = 317.8 Earths\n\nSurface gravity- 2.36\n\nAlbedo- 0.44\n\nAverage temperature -180 °C= -162 °F=165 k\n\nComposition: Largest object in the solar system. Made mostly of lightweight gases. \n\nOpposition: Where and when the best times to see a superior planet. When the planet is on the same side of the sun as Earth. Jupiter is 3x brighter than the brightest st
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INTRODUCTION\n\nAsteroid, one of the many small or minor rocky planetoids that are members of the solar system and that move in elliptical orbits primarily between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.\n\nSIZES AND ORBITS\n\nThe largest object in the asteroid belt is 1 Ceres, with a diameter of about 950 km (about 590 mi). Ceres was long considered to be an asteroid but in 2006 the International Astronomical Union (IAU) reclassified Ceres as a dwarf planet because it has been shaped into a spheroid by its own gravity. (To qualify as a true planet Ceres would need to have cleared the neighborhood of its orbit (the asteroid belt) of other bodies.) The IAU still lists 1 Ceres as a minor planet along with asteroids. The next largest objects in the asteroid belt are 2 Pallas and 4 Vesta, with diameters of about 530 km (about 329 mi). \n\nThe naming of asteroids and other solar system bodies is governed by the IAU. After an astronomer observes a possible unknown asteroid, other astronomers confirm the discovery by observing the body over a period of several orbits and comparing the asteroid’s position and orbit to those of known asteroids. If the asteroid is indeed a newly discovered object, the IAU gives it a number according to its order of discovery, and the astronomer who discovered it chooses a name. Asteroids are usually referred to by both number and name.\n\nAbout 200 asteroids have diameters of more than 97 km (60 mi), and thousands of smaller ones exist. The total mass of all asteroids in the solar system is much less than the mass of the Moon. The larger bodies are roughly spherical, but elongated and irregular shapes are common for those with diameters of less than 160 km (100 mi). Most asteroids, regardless of size, rotate on their axes every 5 to 20 hours. Certain asteroids may be binary, or have satellites of their own.\n\nFew scientists now believe that asteroids are the remnants of a former planet. It is more likely that asteroids occupy a place in the solar system where a sizable planet could have formed but was prevented from doing so by the disruptive gravitational influences of the nearby giant planet Jupiter. Originally perhaps only a few dozen asteroids existed, which were subsequently fragmented by mutual collisions to produce the population now present. Scientists believe that asteroids move out of the asteroid belt because heat from the Sun warms them unevenly. This causes the asteroids to drift slowly away from their original orbits. \n\nThe so-called Trojan asteroids lie in two clouds, one moving 60° ahead of Jupiter in its orbit and the other 60° behind. Astronomers have recently found another group of Trojan asteroids that share Neptune’s orbit, possibly representing a population several times larger than the Jupiter Trojans. In 1977 the asteroid 2060 Chiron was discovered in an orbit between that of Saturn and Uranus. Asteroids that intersect the orbit of Mars are called Amors; asteroids that intersect the orbit of Earth are known as Apollos; and asteroids that have orbits smaller than Earth’s orbit are called Atens. One of the largest inner asteroids is 433 Eros, an elongated body measuring 13 by 33 km (8 by 21 mi). The peculiar Apollo asteroid 3200 Phaethon, about 5 km (about 3 mi) wide, approaches the Sun more closely, at 20.9 million km (13.9 million mi), than any other known asteroid. It is also associated with the yearly return of the Geminid stream of meteors (see Geminids).\n\nSeveral Earth-approaching asteroids are relatively easy targets for space missions. In 1991 the United States Galileo space probe, on its way to Jupiter, took the first close-up pictures of an asteroid. The images showed that the small, lopsided body, 951 Gaspra, is pockmarked with craters, and revealed evidence of a blanket of loose, fragmental material, or regolith, covering the asteroid’s surface. Galileo also visited an asteroid named 243 Ida and found that Ida has its own moon, a smaller asteroid subsequently nam
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It seems very possible that asteroids seeded this planet with life. That might have not been as accidental as some people think.
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No we still have a lot to learn about our solar system, especially the outer planets.  This is in part because they are fairly far away and it takes a while, and a good deal of funding to get out there.  In the case of the gasious Jovian planets this is also because we cant see beneath the very tops of their clouds.  There are strange things that appear to be going on in their interiors but it's hard to get data on this when the pressures would easily crush any spacecraft soon into its decent.
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Jupiter is the largest planet in our solar system. It is also one of the brighter objects in the night sky. No one knows for sure who discovered Jupiter, but we know the ancient Greeks named him after the god, Zeus. \n\nThe most prominent feature of Jupiter is the Great Red Spot. This violent storm has been observed from Earth since the 1600's. But it wasn't until the 1930's that we knew what Jupiter was made of. Astronomer Rupert Wildt researched the planet and found the atmosphere is mostly hydrogen and helium. \n\nBeginning in 1973, the United States sent four spacecraft to observe this massive planet. Pioneer 10 and 11, along with Voyager I and II, sailed past Jupiter. They gathered many images that we still see today. \n\nJupiter's moons are interesting too! Galileo discovered four of the larger moons: Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto in 1610. Most of the other moons were found by the Voyager spacecraft during its flyby. The Jupiter system is almost like a little solar system. Astronomers may continue to discover even more moons as more powerful telescopes become available.
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Enceladus is one of Saturn's moons (6th largest), named after a Greek mythological giant, so it comes from Ancient Greek presumably.
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The Global Asteroid Monitoring System\n\nis a sometimes-loose collaboration of private institutions and government agencies, along with the amateur astronomers and several dozen professional asteroid researchers around the globe. \n\nhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Astronomical_Union\n\n\n\nMinor Planet Center\n\nis the official organization in charge of collecting observational data for minor planets (asteroids) and comets and calculating their orbits, and publishing this information.\n\nhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minor_Planet_Center
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the answer is jupiter.  galileo discovered io, europa, ganymede, and callisto in 1610.
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That's right because Pluto, in fact, may actually be an asteroid and not a planet at all.  It was thought for years that Pluto is a planet, and likely not formally *changed* persay, but it's the largest mass found in an asteroid belt, and, being spherical, it was assumed to be a planet.\n\nScience and the invention of things like the Hubble telescope have shown us more detail on such things as galaxies, planets, asteroid belts, etc.
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Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and is the largest one in the solar system. If Jupiter were hollow, more than one thousand Earths could fit inside. It also contains more matter than all of the other planets combined. It has a mass of 1.9 x 1027 kg and is 142,800 kilometers (88,736 miles) across the equator. Jupiter possesses 28 known satellites, four of which - Callisto, Europa, Ganymede and Io - were observed by Galileo as long ago as 1610. Another 12 satellites have been recently discovered and given provisional designators until they are officially confirmed and named. There is a ring system, but it is very faint and is totally invisible from the Earth. (The rings were discovered in 1979 by Voyager 1.) The atmosphere is very deep, perhaps comprising the whole planet, and is somewhat like the Sun. It is composed mainly of hydrogen and helium, with small amounts of methane, ammonia, water vapor and other compounds. At great depths within Jupiter, the pressure is so great that the hydrogen atoms are broken up and the electrons are freed so that the resulting atoms consist of bare protons. This produces a state in which the hydrogen becomes metallic. \nColorful latitudinal bands, atmospheric clouds and storms illustrate Jupiter's dynamic weather systems. The cloud patterns change within hours or days. The Great Red Spot is a complex storm moving in a counter-clockwise direction. At the outer edge, material appears to rotate in four to six days; near the center, motions are small and nearly random in direction. An array of other smaller storms and eddies can be found through out the banded clouds. \n\nAuroral emissions, similar to Earth's northern lights, were observed in the polar regions of Jupiter. The auroral emissions appear to be related to material from Io that spirals along magnetic field lines to fall into Jupiter's atmosphere. Cloud-top lightning bolts, similar to superbolts in Earth's high atmosphere, were also observed.