Astronomers Accidentally Discover 12 New Moons Orbiting Jupiter; The Biggest Planet Now Has a Total of 79 Satellites!
The astronomers were looking for objects on the fringes of the solar system when they spotted tiny moons near Jupiter.
Astronomers have accidentally discovered a dozen new moons circling the planet Jupiter. With the new set of discovery, Jupiter now has 79 moons, which is the most for any planet found until now. The discovery of these moons wasn't planned or intentional. The astronomers were looking for objects on the fringes of the solar system when they spotted tiny moons near Jupiter. The astronomers confirmed about the discovery of two moons earlier and rest of them on Tuesday.
The moons were discovered with telescopes made in Chile, Hawaii and Arizona. Jupiter has the biggest moon in the solar system, Ganymede, with a diameter of 3,273 miles (5,268 km). However, the newly discovered ones are tinier and the size range is about six-tenths of a mile (1 km) to 2.5 miles (4 km). Jupiter's diameter is 88,846 miles, i.e. 142, 984 km.
The discovery was made by a team, led by astronomer Scott S Sheppard of the Carnegie Institution for Science. They were looking for an evidence of the mysterious Planet Nine, a proposed outer Solar System body using ground-based telescopes when they found the new satellites.
The powerful telescope helped them to look into high resolutions thus spotting the moons. Reportedly, the researchers said that these moons may have been formed during the early days of the solar system and were probably captured by Jupiter's strong gravitational pull.
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Sheppard said, "Jupiter is like a big vacuum cleaner because it's so massive. These objects started orbiting Jupiter, instead of falling into it. So we think they're intermediate between rocky asteroids and icy comets. So they're probably half ice and half rock."
One of Jupiter's moons, Valetudo (pronounced Val-eh-TOO-doh) is named after the ancient Roman god Jupiter's great-granddaughter, the goddess of health and hygiene. The satellite orbits the planet in the same direction as Jupiter. Sheppard said, "Valetudo's going down the highway the wrong way, so it's very likely it will collide with these other objects. It probably has collided with them over time." The researchers also added that there could be other planets with undiscovered satellites too.
(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Jul 18, 2018 01:06 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).