Discovery and exploration of the Solar System Discovery and exploration of the Solar System Discovery and exploration of the Solar System is observation, visitation, and increase in knowledge and understanding of Earth's "cosmic neighborhood". This includes the Sun, Earth and the Moon, the major planets including Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, their satellites, as well as smaller bodies including comets, asteroids, and dust. For many thousands of years, astronomers maintained a geocentric world view and did not recognize the existence of a Solar System. Most believed Earth was stationary at the center of the Universe and categorically different from the divine or ethereal objects
Solar eclipses on Jupiter to 357" at aphelion. Unlike the near coincidence of the apparent sizes of the Moon and Sun as viewed from Earth, this perspective exaggerates the apparent diameters of all the Galilean moons in comparison to the Sun. Even distant Callisto is over 50% larger, and Io is nearly six times as large. This disparity in angular size makes the moons' shadows on Jupiter more defined than the lunar shadow on Earth during a total solar eclipse, as it narrows the penumbra for a given distance. Solar eclipses on Jupiter Solar eclipses on Jupiter occur when any of the natural satellites