When the names won't stick: the case of Galileo's moons

In a series of stargazing observations in the winter of 1610 using his newly designed telescope, Galileo Galilei noticed that the four bright spots around Jupiter were not fixed stars, but objects orbiting the planet.

Four hundred years later, we still refer to Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto as the Galilean moons of Jupiter, the planet's largest satel…