NASA Shares Epic First Time-Lapse of Jupiter’s Moons in Orbit

NASA’s Juno spacecraft started orbiting Jupiter today after a 5 year journey from Earth. During its approach, the spacecraft captured a series of photos over the span of multiple weeks, showing the planet’s moons in orbit. NASA then turned the images into the epic time-lapse seen in the 3-minute video above.

The first photo was captured in June 12th, when Juno was 10 million miles away from the gas giant. The last photo in the series was shot on June 29th from “just” 3 million miles away.

We see the moons Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto in the frame, the same moons that were observed by Galileo, sparking a revolution in how we see our universe.

“Galileo observed these moons to change position with respect to Jupiter over the course of a few nights,” writes NASA. “From this observation he realized that the moons were orbiting mighty Jupiter, a truth that forever changed humanity’s understanding of our place in the cosmos. Earth was not the center of the Universe.”