Astronomers discover 12 new moons of Jupiter, one of them with an atypical orbit | Science and Health

The first clue to these new moons appeared last spring (in the northern hemisphere), when a team from the US Institute led by Scott Sheppard examined the sky at the search for very distant objects as part of "a possible planet next to Pluto, known as the X planet.

The Center of the Minor Planets of the International Astronomical Union used the data obtained to calculate the orbits of the new moons, a process that lasted about a year "

Nine moons are part of an outer cloud that revolves around Jupiter in the opposite direction of the planet's rotation which took about two years to give. the turn in the star and is supposed to be the remains of three larger celestial bodies that were broken by collisions.

Two others form an intergroup or closer to Jupiter orbiting the planet in the same direction as their rotation, with orbital distances and similar tilt angles, so that they could also be part of a bigger moon.

The last moon is "really a rare object", in the words of Sheppard, who explained that it is a satellite that has an orbit that does not resemble any of Jupiter's other moons.

In addition, Valetudo – the proposed name for this moon in honor of the goddess of health and hygiene, great-grandson of the Roman god Jupiter – is only a mile and a half in diameter, it is probably the smallest satellite of Jupiter.

Valetudo is part of the group of nine moons more distant, more inclined than the others, and takes about 18 months to complete its orbit.

But what attracts the most attention is its orbit, as it revolves around Jupiter in the same direction as the planet's rotation, that is to say that She moves in the opposite direction to others in her group. they are most likely to cause frontal collisions.

"It's an unstable situation" because the frontal shocks would break up and turn the objects into dust, "said the astronomer.

The team believes this little moon" extravagantly "could be one of the last remnants of a larger satellite." For scientists, the clarification of "complex influences" that have shaped the orbital history of a moon can provide For example, the knowledge that in the various orbital groups of Jupiter's smaller moons continue to be abundant, "suggests" that the collisions that produced them occurred after the Of the formation of the planet, when the Sun was still surrounded by a disk of gas and dust

The initial discovery of most of the new moons of Jupiter was made with the Victor Blanco telescope at Colina Tololo in Chile, improved with a dark energy camera, making it a "powerful tool" to monitor the night sky for dark objects.