Moons of Jupiter around Ganymede. In 2016, the "Juno" spacecraft imaged the Galilean moons from above their orbital plane as it approached Jupiter orbit insertion, creating a time-lapse movie of their motion. Moons of Jupiter There are 79 known moons of Jupiter. This gives Jupiter the largest number of moons with reasonably stable orbits of any planet in the Solar System. The most massive of the moons are the four Galilean moons, which were independently discovered in 1610 by Galileo Galilei and Simon Marius and were the first objects found to orbit a body that was neither Earth nor the Sun. From the
Orbit of the Moon the Moon's orbit around Earth, its relative timing varies greatly. In some places on Earth, there is only one high tide per day, whereas others such as Southampton have four, though this is somewhat rare. The notional tidal bulges are carried ahead of the Earth–Moon orientation by the continents as a result of Earth's rotation. The eccentric mass of each bulge exerts a small amount of gravitational attraction on the Moon, with the bulge on the side of Earth closest to the Moon pulling in a direction slightly forward along the Moon's orbit (because Earth's rotation has carried the bulge