When was the planet Jupiter discovered?

As one of the five planets visible from the Earth with the naked eye, Jupiter was independently seen and discovered by many ancient civilizations. While no specific year can be definitively attributed to Jupiter's discovery, the Babylonians first recorded seeing it in either the seventh or eighth century B.C.

As the first person to view Jupiter with a telescope, Galileo is sometimes credited with officially discovering the planet in 1610, when he also discovered four of its moons. In the 1660s, Giovanni Cassini discovered Jupiter's Great Red Spot, one of the planet's most distinctive features. Jupiter's rings were discovered in 1979 by Voyager I, along with additional moons orbiting the planet.