On this day in space! July 6, 1938: Discovery of Jupiter's moon Lysithea

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On July 6, 1938, an American astronomer named Seth Barnes Nicholson discovered Jupiter's moon Lysithea.

On July 6, 1938, an American astronomer named Seth Barnes Nicholson discovered Jupiter's moon Lysithea.

Nicholson spotted Lysithea from Mount Wilson Observatory in California, where he had previously discovered three more Jovian moons. This was the tenth moon astronomers had found at Jupiter. As of June 2017, 69 moons have been found orbiting Jupiter.

Color composite of Jupiter's moon Lysithea. (Image credit: IPAC/Caltech)

Lysithea only measures about 11 miles in diameter and is part of Jupiter's Himalia group, which contains five irregular moons that follow similar orbits and are thought to have a common origin.

It was named after the mythological character Lysithea, daughter of the god Oceanus and one of the many lovers of the almighty Zeus.

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Hanneke Weitering
Hanneke Weitering
Contributing expert

Hanneke Weitering is a multimedia journalist in the Pacific Northwest reporting on the future of aviation at FutureFlight.aero and Aviation International News and was previously the Editor for Spaceflight and Astronomy news here at Space.com. As an editor with over 10 years of experience in science journalism she has previously written for Scholastic Classroom Magazines, MedPage Today and The Joint Institute for Computational Sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. After studying physics at the University of Tennessee in her hometown of Knoxville, she earned her graduate degree in Science, Health and Environmental Reporting (SHERP) from New York University. Hanneke joined the Space.com team in 2016 as a staff writer and producer, covering topics including spaceflight and astronomy. She currently lives in Seattle, home of the Space Needle, with her cat and two snakes. In her spare time, Hanneke enjoys exploring the Rocky Mountains, basking in nature and looking for dark skies to gaze at the cosmos.