Hubble Books


The moon plays a large role in astrology and astrological phenomena. The position and phase of the moon influences the other aspects of astrology, including sun signs and planetary movements. In fact, the moon influences other aspects of astrology as a whole. Galilean Moons Of Jupiter. One dark, clear January night in 1610, Galileo Galilei climbed to the roof of his house in Padua. He looked up at the sky that was speckled with the flickering fires of a multitude of starry objects, and then aimed his small, primitive "spyglass"--which was really one of the first telescopes--up at that star-blasted sky above his home. Over the course of several such starlit, clear winter nights, Galileo discovered the four large Galilean moons that circle around the largest planet in our Sun's family, the enormous, gaseous world, Jupiter. This intriguing quartet of moons--Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto--were named for four of the numerous mythic lovers of the King of the Roman gods. Dr. Thomas and his team at Cornell University have tried to peer into the mysterious interior of the weird little Space egg that is Methone. They started out with the hypothesis that Saturn's relentless strong gravity pulls the little moon into an elongated shape, just like Earth's own large Moon raises ocean tides on our own planet. Then the team went on to calculate how dense the little moon would have to be for its own gravity to counteract those intense tidal forces and create its strange egg-shape.