Posted on 05/16/2002 3:41:07 PM PDT by grimalkin
— WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Jupiter has 11 more moons than astronomers once thought, bringing the known total for the giant planet to 39, the most in our solar system, scientists reported on Thursday.
The newly discovered moons -- or satellites as astronomers call them -- are small, far from the planet and have eccentric orbits, but they still count, researchers said in a statement.
The new satellites were detected last December by astronomers at the University of Hawaii, using the Canada-France-Hawaii telescope and one of the largest digital imaging cameras in the world, the scientists said.
Digital images were processed with high-speed computers, and likely candidates were watched in the next months to confirm their orbits and to reject asteroids masquerading as moons.
All 11 new moons are considered irregular satellites. They all have retrograde orbits, meaning they go around Jupiter in the opposite direction to the planet's rotation.
They have long, elliptical orbits, which suggest they were captured by Jupiter when the big planet was young, perhaps in the first million years of the solar system's existence.
They are all quite small, with diameters between 1.2 miles and 2.5 miles. Nothing is known about what they are made of, how dense they are or what their surfaces are like, but scientists presume they are asteroid-like space rocks.
Among Jupiter's 39 known satellites, 31 are irregulars. The eight regular satellites consist of four large moons and four smaller ones.
Jupiter's nearest rival for having the largest number of known satellites is Saturn, with 30.
Owl_Eagle
”Guns Before Butter.”
Basically, anything observable is a moon. Phobos and Diemos of Mars, for example, are 14 and 9 miles respectively.
"Wildly elliptical," wouldn't you say?
Looking into my crystal ball, I see a great business opportunity to take advantage of the gullibility of the public. It will entail heavy radio advertising campaigns to get suckers to pony up cash to have a "Jovian Moon Named after YOU!"
"That's right, air-heads. You, too, can have a Jovian moon named after you or a relative. Your Jovian Moon will be recorded in a niftily-named book that is copyrighted soley for the purpose of impressing suckers, as there will never be more than one copy of this book, which will never, ever be consulted by ANY Astronomer for any professional purpose whatsoever. Call now, operators are waiting to take YOUR Jovian Moon order. Please have your credit cards and your intense desire to be taken advantage of handy."
An unnerving thought.....
Only if their orbital periods are 1720 days.....
No, no. Those names are already reserved by Physicists.... for sub-atomic particles.
;-)
Those are the new quark flavors.
That's what I thought.....
;-)
Does anyone know or would please explain,for the layman,how that works or how that could be?I'd really like to understand that one.I remember last year on the 'Astronomy Picture Of The Day' site,there was a "Coronal Inflow"---{it said,among other things "...a dark inflowing cloud's relative motion is tracked above in two highly processed images recorded an hour apart..."}of 'stuff' going Towards the Sun,which they still can't fully explain,but it sure as hell looked interesting.It's great to see some things that our tax dollars are used for.
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