These moons were discovered through a Telescope in Hawaii and Chile in the years 2021 and 2022. And after a follow-up observation, the orbits of these moons were discovered. Anything which moves near Jupiter can be considered as a moon but to confirm, takes time and observation, which can be a month or a year to see whether the object is still orbiting the planet.
In the circulars of the International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Centre, the orbits of these unnamed moons recently discovered were published because it keeps a record of all the small bodies discovered in the Solar System.
How Were They Discovered?
These moons were accidentally observed by a team of astronomers led by astronomer Scott Sheppard of the Carnegie Institution for Science when they were looking for some distant Solar System objects. According to Sheppard, Jupiter just happened to be in the sky near the search fields where they were looking for the objects. As the team was looking for small distant objects so they used a more powerful telescope than ever before, which helped them to spot these small and dim moons which were hidden by the large and reflective planet.
Characteristics
These moon’s sizes range from 0.6 miles to 2 miles. Nine of these moons are quite distant from Jupiter and orbits in the opposite direction to Jupiter’s rotation known as retrograde moons, orbiting once every 550 days or more. The rest three moons are closer to the planet and move in the same direction as Jupiter’s rotation known as prograde moons.
These retrograde moons are assumed to be the remains of three larger bodies that were captured by Jupiter’s orbit known as Jovian orbit and broke into pieces because of other objects colliding with it. Some of the observations also suggest that maybe the retrograde moons have been created by the collisions with prograde moons as they move in the same orbit. This idea will be confirmed by further studies.
These moons have not been named yet because of their very small size and less known characteristics so the European Space Agency is sending a spacecraft in the month of April to Jupiter for further studies about the planet and its moons. Next year NASA will launch the Europa Clipper to explore Jupiter’s moon.
Facts
According to Sheppard both the planets Jupiter and Saturn have many small moons which are believed to be the remains of bigger moons that collided with one another or with comets and asteroids. So, there are high chances of finding more moons around these planets.
In record Uranus has 27 moons, Neptune has 14, Mars has 2 and Earth has 1. Venus and Mercury are considered empty. So, the battle is not over until all the moons are discovered.
