AMU Editor's Pick Original Space

This Week in Space! January 6, 1905: Charles Perrine Discovers a New Moon of Jupiter

By Wes O’Donnell
Managing Editor of In Military, InCyberDefense and In Space News.

This week in 1905, Charles Dillon Perrine discovered a new moon of Jupiter, later named Elara (from Greek mythology, the mother of the giant Tityus and fathered by Zeus).

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Elara, the gas giant’s 12th moon, has a diameter of only 50 miles and orbits Jupiter at a distance of 7.25 million miles.

Born in Steubenville, Ohio in 1867, Perrine worked at the Lick Observatory in California from 1893 to 1909. He is also credited with the discovery of 13 comets.

NASA’s Elara Fact Sheet

Elara did not get its present name until 1975; before then, it was simply known as Jupiter VII. In February 2007, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft captured several images of Elara on its fly-by on its way to Pluto. Elara is small enough to be considered a chunk of a D-class asteroid that broke apart and was captured by Jupiter’s gravity. The other chunks of this asteroid became the moons Himalia, Leda, and Lysithea.

These four similar moons are named the Himalia group.

Himalia Group. Image courtesy NASA/JPL

 

Elara. Image courtesy NASA/JPL

Wes O'Donnell

Wes O’Donnell is an Army and Air Force veteran and writer covering military and tech topics. As a sought-after professional speaker, Wes has presented at U.S. Air Force Academy, Fortune 500 companies, and TEDx, covering trending topics from data visualization to leadership and veterans’ advocacy. As a filmmaker, he directed the award-winning short film, “Memorial Day.”

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