Ganymede

A bronze sculpture of Ganymede by Italian Mannerist sculptor and goldsmith Benvenuto Cellini. At first influenced by Raphael's school, Cellini later came under the shadow of the Florentine sculptor and artist Michelangelo. According to Homer's Iliad, Book V, Ganymede was the great-grandson of Dardanus, founder of Troy. Zeus abducted Ganymede, giving his father a herd of horses by way of compensation, for he wanted the beautiful boy as his cup-bearer.

In Greek mythology according to Homer, a youth so beautiful he was taken as cupbearer to Zeus, king of the gods. He was deemed responsible for the annual flooding of the Nile, and was later identified with the constellation Aquarius.

Zeus compensated the boy's father Tros, king of Troy, with a pair of immortal white horses.

There are many variants of this myth. The abduction may be carried out by Zeus, his eagle, or by Zeus transformed as an eagle; Tros' grandson Laomedon often appeared as the father; and the horses may be replaced by a golden vine.

Ganymede

In astronomy, largest moon of the planet Jupiter, orbiting every 7.2 days at a distance of 1.1 million km/700,000 mi. It is the largest moon in the Solar System, 5,260 km/3,270 mi in diameter (larger than the planet Mercury). Its surface is a mixture of extensively cratered and grooved terrain. Molecular oxygen was identified on Ganymede's surface in 1994. It is thought that Ganymede has a water ice crust and possibly a buried water ocean

The space probe Galileo detected a magnetic field around Ganymede in 1996; this suggests it may have a molten core. Galileo photographed Ganymede at a distance of 7,448 km/4,628 mi. The resulting images were 17 times clearer than those taken by Voyager 2 in 1979.