The moons of Jupiter travel around her at a regular rate, like the hands of a clock. Galileo thought that you could use the moons as a universal clock. With that clock as a reference point, you could use local time to figure out where you are on Earth.
This sounds like a great idea, but how does it work? I’m guessing that you look at Jupiter, see where her moons are, and calculate where you are on Earth based on which moons you can see. For instance, on Wednesday, May 25, if you’re in North America and you have a telescope you can watch Io and Europa pass in front of Jupiter. If you live on the east coast you’ll see them only starting out; on the west coast you’ll see them only at the end. If you live in the middle of North America you’ll see most of the passage.
Since they know exactly when those moons will be zipping across the face of Jupiter and how long it will take, astronomers are able to make charts of the moons’ progress showing local times everywhere on Earth.
This strikes me as a huge amount of work to figure out where you are on Earth. Then again, I’m holding a cell phone with a GPS (Global Positioning System) so it’s pretty easy for me to know exactly where I am. If I were floating around in the ocean in the 1600s, with no GPS, I imagine I’d be pretty desperate to know exactly where I were and would consider breaking out the old telescope to have a squint at Jupiter and her moons.
https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/moons/jupiter-moons/overview/?page=0&per_page=40&order=name+asc&search=&placeholder=Enter+moon+name&condition_1=9%3Aparent_id&condition_2=moon%3Abody_type%3Ailike
https://www.space.com/11724-jupiter-moons-shadow-play-skywatching.html
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