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In searching for the elusive planet X, astronomers discovered 12 additional moons around Jupiter, bringing the total known satellites of the planet to 79.
The new moons are all relatively small – between 1 and 3 According to scientists, the kilometers traveled (.6 to 1.8 miles), which is probably the reason why they have never been spotted before.
They were sighted in the spring of 2017 by researchers who have spent the last few years researching Planet X., also known as Planet 9 – an object that they hope to be the size of Mars or more great.
They believe that it is in the far solar system, 100 times farther from the Sun than the Earth. (For reference, Pluto is about 30 times farther away from the sun than the Earth.)
Anything that, far away, will receive very little sunlight that it can return to telescopes on Earth, that is to say. That's why research by Scott Sheppard, an astronomer from the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, who was leading the work, said the team of scientists was using a four-meter telescope in Chile, attached to the larger camera . Sheppard said:
As the camera is so large, it can capture a larger area of sky in a single exposure than it was possible before.
"This allows us to be much more efficient than in the past," Sheppard said. "Once upon a time an image was essentially the area of a full moon in the night sky.Now we can cover twelve times as much."
Sheppard and her colleagues are primarily focused on the area. study of the deep external solar system, but a few years ago, they realized that the Jupiter system was well placed to examine them more closely. "1965-19002" It was a bit like trying to kill two birds with one stone, "Sheppard said. "We thought we could find a few more moons and cover the entire Jovian system in a single exhibition, which had not been done before."
Researchers deliberately chose fields that would allow them to see Jupiter's moons without light.
They were able to determine which points of light in their images were Jovian moons because they were moving across the sky at the same rate as their host planet. much slower would be a more distant object, "said Sheppard.
Their sightings revealed the 12 moons never seen before. Eleven of them were verified by representatives of the Planet Minor Center. International Astronomical Union.The status of the twelfth moon is still pending, although researchers expect it to be soon verified.
Most newly discovered moons belong to two families of satellites previously known.
Nine of them surround Jupiter in a broad, retrograde orbit, which means that they are moving in the opposite direction to the planet's rotation.It takes them about two Earth years to orbit around Jupiter
Two of them are part of a more internal group of moons surrounding the planet in the prograde, or in the same direction as it turns. finish one orbits around Jupiter in a year from Earth.
However, there is a moon, tentatively called Valetudo, which stands out. It does not belong to any known group of moons, and it follows a strange, prograde orbit that occasionally crosses the path of retrograde moons.
"It's basically going in the wrong direction on the highway," Sheppard said. "And that means the chances of a collision are much higher."
Sheppard said the discovery of Valetudo could help answer some long-standing questions about the formation of the vast Jovian system.
Scientists believe that families of small moons we see in Jupiter's orbit today may have been once, larger moons that separated after striking something – perhaps an asteroid or a comet.
But if Valetudo is the remnant of a much larger moon with the same orbit odd Families of small moons were created by the collision of two moons.
Sheppard added that the team is currently running a simulation using supercomputers to determine how long before Valetudo crashes on one of the retrograde orbit moons. He expects this to happen between 100 and 1 billion years ago.
"The chances of seeing an impact over the course of a year are minimal, but this is likely in the life of the solar system," Gareth Williams said. , astronomer at the Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics at Harvard, who determined the orbits of the newly discovered moons for the International Astronomical Union.
Williams said that he was not surprised by Sheppard's discovery of additional moons around Jupiter.
There are probably hundreds of moons around Jupiter that are one kilometer or more in diameter right now, "he said.
However, he said the find is still significant [19659025] "To know how many satellites around each planet is important because any training scenario for the planet must account for the satellite system," he said. "If your model has only 20 satellites, that's not going to happen. not flying when you will suddenly have 60. "
He added that now that these moons have been discovered and their orbits determined, scientists will know where to point their telescopes for further study. how dark they are and what they are made of, which will help researchers to learn more about the makeup of our solar system.
Meanwhile, Sheppard's hunt for Planet X continues. what could he and his colleagues discover along the way?
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