Jupiter has 12 more moons
Miscellaneous / / April 04, 2023
Now the planet has bypassed even Saturn in the number of satellites.
Scientists discovered There are 12 previously unseen moons orbiting Jupiter, bringing the number of moons of the gas giant to 92. This is more than that of Saturn, which accompanies 83 celestial bodies.
It took two years to find the new 12 satellites. 9 of these moons are in distant clusters of moons that orbit Jupiter retrograde (that is, in the opposite direction of the rotation of the inner moons). It takes them about 550 days to complete one revolution around the planet. The remaining 3 are between the nearest Galilean satellites (Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto) and distant retrograde moons. They need at least 340 days for a full turn.
The new satellites are too small to merit proper names. Scientists believe that these are fragments of larger moons that broke into pieces millions of years ago after colliding with other objects.
In fact, both Jupiter and Saturn most likely have even more moons, but finding them is a difficult task for astronomers. Small satellites, which have not yet been detected, can probably only be seen with extremely powerful telescopes. But this technique does not give a wide enough field of view to cover the entire Jupiter system. At the same time, the strong glow emitted by Jupiter only complicates the situation.
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