This composite was made with images from NASA’s Juno mission and shows Jupiter’s shadow cast by Io, one of its many moons.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Kevin M. Gill
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NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Kevin M. Gill
This composite was made with images from NASA’s Juno mission and shows Jupiter’s shadow cast by Io, one of its many moons.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Kevin M. Gill
Scientists have spotted 12 more moons around Jupiter, adding to the already-huge number that just seems to be growing and growing.
There are so many moons around this gas giant planet that astronomer Scott Sheppard is trying to keep track of.
“With this new tract, we’re up to, I believe, 92 … I have to check,” he said, leaning to type on his computer at the Carnegie Institution for Earth and Planetary Sciences. Berlin, DC “Yes, 92 is the number we have now.”
His team is currently chasing several more moons that once confirmed over the next year or two would put Jupiter over 100 parts.
It’s not a case of looking for more moons, says Sheppard: If one is found in the right orbit, a space mission could fly close to Jupiter and take a peek, giving scientists an idea of what happens to the moon.
It’s important because Jupiter’s small, outer moons are pretty mysterious. Astronomers suspect that they are remnants of the original structural material that formed the largest planet in the solar system.
Sheppard discovered new moons around Jupiter for two decades, leading some colleagues to jokingly call him “Galileo,” after the famous astronomer who first discovered that Jupiter had moons in 1610.
Each year, Sheppard and his fellow astronomers use better technology and bigger telescopes to add more moons. Extemporaneous Jupiter holds the record for most known moons, pushing Saturn, who is 83.
Unlike the four large “Galilean” moons, which have some dramatic features such as volcanoes and subsurface oceans;
“Moon” is defined as an object orbiting a planet, he says, but other than that astronomers haven’t really debated how big an object to count.
“One thing I would say is that the International Astronomical Union has decided not to name any moon smaller than 1 kilometer in size,” he said.
Some of the moons he discovered around Jupiter are about the size of a man could walk around them in twelve minutes. These lunulae appear from the ground like streaks of light.
“These are some jagged, jagged, elongated objects, with probably several craters on their surface,” he says.
They are probably fragments or shells that were once part of a larger object. The way these moons cluster around Jupiter suggests that each cluster is a remnant of what was once a larger moon.
“We think that initially there were only a few parent moons that were ejected by other moons or comets and disrupted the age of the solar system,” he says.
However, it is not clear where those first moons arose. “Those outer moons didn’t form with this planet. We think they’re trapped,” Sheppard said.
The more moons it finds, the more likely it is that it will be on a near-space path to Jupiter.
More spacecraft will soon venture out there to investigate larger, icy moons closer to the planet’s orbit. The European Space Agency’s mission is scheduled to launch in April, and NASA is sending a probe to Europa.
One of the most amazing moons found around Jupiter, and Sheppard’s personal favorite, is a little oddball that travels without any companions.
“The orbit is really far from the planet and in a region where everyone else is going in the opposite direction. So it’s kind of pushing against traffic,” says Marina Brozovic, a scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who is calculating the orbit. outer moon
Saturn’s rising moon also shows the count. After a bunch of new Saturn calendars were announced in 2019, the most famous moons from Jupiter took over. Jupiter now holds the title again.
“A genus of this genus between Jupiter and Saturn; which has more moons?” says Brozovic, noting that some researchers have recently theorized that Saturn should have had more recently, because of a recent encounter that likely created a class of shards.
Between Jupiter and Saturn, he says, there are likely hundreds more moons waiting to be discovered. And Uranus and Neptune certainly hide the outer moons as well. But so far away, it’s hard to see them.
Sheppard says he and his colleagues have searched for small, unknown moons around other planets, such as Mars and Venus, without finding anything, and plan to search around Mercury in the coming months.
“We just finished Uranus and Neptune,” he said. “So he joined early. Some interesting things from him in the future.”
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