Jupiter: Now Home to More Moons Than Any Other Planet
Jupiter, the fifth and largest planet to our sun, is now also home to more moons than any other planet in our solar system – with the discovery of 12 new moons! It brings Jupiter’s total to a whopping 79 natural satellites.
A Mysterious Mix
Although their orbits have yet to be confirmed, these newly cataloged moons are thought to fall into three distinct categories:
- Nine “normal” outer moons, which are farther away and have prograde orbits.
- Two inner prograde moons, which circle in the same direction as the planet.
- One retrograde moon, which follows a more circuitous, clockwise route.
A Surprise Discovery
Researchers from the Carnegie Institution for Science discovered the moons while studying various objects in the Kuiper Belt, a region of icy rocks located beyond Neptune.
The group was actually looking for an entirely different object when they stumbled across these celestial bodies. Scott Sheppard, a scientist on the team, says “we were actually looking for extremely distant solar system objects, but instead we found these moons much closer to Jupiter.”
This lucky fluke was made possible by the advanced technology the team was using. The switch from traditional film cameras to digital cameras made scanning the night sky much easier, allowing researchers to observe more bodies much quicker.
A Fit Family
The newly discovered moons are thought to have formed around the same time as Jupiter – 4.5 billion years ago. This means they hold clues to the earliest days of the planet, and could give researchers a better understanding of the formation of planets in our solar system.
The discovery of these moons also helps scientists further classify the different categories of moons orbiting our planets.
A Celestial Record Breaker
Eight of Jupiter’s moons, including Europa and Ganymede, have been known since Galileo observed them over 400 years ago. Since then, astronomers have discovered over 60 others.
With the detection of these 12 new moons, Jupiter officially has more moons than any of the other planets in our solar system.
Given the advanced technology now available to the scientific community, we could be on the brink of discovering even more moons around our favorite Jovian planet. Who knows, maybe some day we’ll find something even more incredible.
The planet Jupiter is now undisputedly the king of our Solar System when it comes to the total number of moons it hosts, after astronomers recently announced the discovery of a further 12 moons, bringing the total up to 79, surpassing the previous record held by Saturn.
The newly discovered moons orbit Jupiter in a retrograde motion and range in size from roughly one kilometer to three kilometers in diameter. All of the moons were found due to a survey facilitated by the powerful Subaru telescope in Hawaii, and were reported by an international group of scientists.
The survey was prompted by the previous discoveries of oddball moons orbiting Jupiter in the opposite direction of the planet’s other moons. This team of astronomers was thus looking for more such moons, confirming their existence.
This newfound cluster of moons is unlike the majority of Jupiter’s other moons, and their retrograde motion implies they were formed during a collision between two moons or a moon and asteroids at the outskirts of the planet.
Interestingly, this discovery proves that moons orbiting in a retrograde orbit can remain exactly how they were formed and will not be destructively thrown into outer space. This makes Jupiter an even more special and unique planet, being the only one in our Solar System capable of hosting such a clustering of moons.
No doubt these new discoveries will fuel further exploration and research, as scientists try to better understand the origin and mechanics of Jupiter’s vast moon system.