From the nearer moon, in particular, which is situated less than 220,000 miles from Jupiter's surface, the great planet would be an overwhelming phenomenon in the sky.
Its immense disk, hanging overhead, would cover a circle of the firmament twenty degrees in diameter, or, in round numbers, forty times the diameter of the full moon as seen from the earth! It would shed a great amount of light and heat, and thus would more or less effectively supply the deficit of solar radiation, for we must remember that Jupiter and his satellites receive from the sun less than one twenty-fifth as much light and heat as the earth receives.
The maze of contending motions, the rapid flow and eddying of cloud belts, the outburst of strange fiery spots, the display of rich, varied, and constantly changing colors, which astonish and delight the telescopic observer on the earth, would be exhibited to the naked eye of an inhabitant of Jupiter's nearest moon far more clearly than the greatest telescope is able to reveal them to us.
Here, again, the mind is carried back to long past ages in the history of the planet on which we dwell.

It is believed by some that our moon may have contained inhabitants when the earth was still hot and glowing, as Jupiter appears to be now, and that, as the earth cooled and became habitable, the moon gradually parted with its atmosphere and water so that its living races perished almost coincidently with the beginning of life on the earth.

If we accept this view and apply it to the case of Jupiter we may conclude that when that enormous globe has cooled and settled down to a possibly habitable condition, its four attendant moons will suffer the fate that overtook the earth's satellite, and in their turn become barren and death-stricken, while the great orb that once nurtured them with its light and heat receives the Promethean fire and begins to bloom with life..