Europa, also known as ????p? in Greek, was first discovered in the year of 1610 by Galileo Galilei. Europa was named after a mythical Phoenician(= Phoenicia is an ancient civilization to the north of ancient Canaan) noblewoman whose name was Europa. She was trained by King of all Gods, Zeus, and thus, Europa became the queen of the land Crete. Europa today is the smallest of the four moons of Jupiter (also known as Jove).

    Europa is about 3000 kilometers in diameter, which makes it slightly smaller than Earth's moon, and the sixth biggest moon in our Solar System. Europa is composed of silicate rock and it most likely has an iron core. This moon has a weak atmosphere covered with tons of oxygen. As for the surface of Europa, it's made of ice, which makes Europa's surface one of the smoothest in our Solar System.

    Usually, Europa was simply referred to as Jupiter ll or the second star of Jupiter. In the year of 1892, when Amalthea was discovered, Europa was forced to become third position of all the moons of Jupiter. Then, along came the Voyager Probes who found three more inner satellites in 1979, so it was no longer in third place.

    There are not very many craters on the surface of Europa due to the fact that this moon is still young and because it is tectonically active. Europa has an icy crust, which gives it an albedo (light reflectivity) of 0.64, which is almost the highest of all the moons!

    If you look carefully, you can see the surface of Europa is covered with a series of dark streaks crisscrossing the entire globe. These lines are called lineae. In English, they are the same meaning as the word line. Europa is also circular and have lenticulae (Latin for "freckles"). Many of these lenticulae are domes, but some are pits and others are smooth dark spots. The top of the domes look like pieces of the older plains around them, which gives evidence that the domes formed when the plains were pushed up from below.

    A lot of astronomers believe that there is liquid water under Europa's surface, which is kept warm by tidally made heat. Some people think that there may be life forms under Europa's "ice ocean" which is quite similar to the Antarctic Lake Vostok.