Astronomers Discover Twelve New Jovian Moons | Astronomy

However, astronomers just discovered 12 new moons around Jupiter, and one of them is very freaky. And one of them is quite the oddball. By this latest count, our solar system's largest planet now has 79 moons, more than any other.

The moons were discovered with telescopes made in Chile, Hawaii and Arizona. And he realized that Jupiter was right near the part of the sky he wanted to search.

Over the weeks following full opposition, Jupiter will reach its highest point in the sky four minutes earlier each night, appearing as a bright, star-like object. Distant solar system objects can't move that quickly. Where their observations had previously been akin to looking through a straw, their capability now is 10 times bigger. If 12 moons were orbiting a planet, undiscovered until now, imagine the hidden possibilities of what else is lurking out in the great expanse of space. Scientists were using the camera to look for a large but elusive planet beyond Pluto, dubbed Planet X or Planet Nine.

"This is an unstable situation", Scott Sheppard of Carnegie says in a statement.

"As it takes many interpretations to confirm an object in reality orbits around Jupiter", Williams said adding that the whole procedure took a year.

Nine moons are part of the planet's outer swarm of moons, orbiting in retrograde or in the opposite direction of Jupiter's spin rotation.

Two new moons are closer in, go the right way, and take about an Earth year for one orbit. These distant retrograde moons are grouped into at least three distinct orbital groupings and are thought to be the remnants of three once-larger parent bodies that broke apart during collisions with asteroids, comets, or other moons. This means, unlike the closer in moons, it crosses the outer retrograde moons. The lost moons were initially sighted in 2003, but scientists could not define their exact orbits and lost track of them. Of the 12, 11 moons are "normal" outer moons, and one "oddball" moon.

In terms of what it should be called, one of the leading suggestions has been Valetudo, the goddess of health and hygiene, and the great-granddaughter of the Roman god Jupiter.

"Valetudo is like driving down the highway on the wrong side of the road". This proved to be quite helpful, as the unknown moons around Jupiter are small and dim. Over the course of a billion years, it may even cease to exist.

All the newly identified moons are relatively small. "Most of the small objects that helped build the planets we see today were incorporated into the planets themselves, and these moons are all that remains", Sheppard wrote.

"This just shows how chaotic our solar system was in the past". It could be as much as 15 times the size of Earth. This tells us something about the timing of the formation of these moon families, which, in turn, tells us something new about the formation of the Solar System.

A moon is simply a rock in orbit around a planet, and there is now no minimum size for something to be called a moon. These astronomers said that, while the new observations were exciting, they needed to confirmed them.