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400 years after Galileo observed the largest moons of Jupiter, astronomers in the United States discovered 12 more satellites of the largest planet in the solar system.
And one of these new moons is a "strange ball" that moves in the opposite direction to other Jupiter satellites, in a "suicide trajectory."
The discovery brings the number of moons known to Jupiter at 79 the largest number of satellites around a planet in the solar system
Telescope at Cerro Tololo
The new satellites were detected in March 2017 by a team led by the United States. astronomer Scott Sheppard of the Carnegie Institution for Science, Carnegie Institution for Science, in Washington .
Moons were discovered with the telescope Víctor M. Blanco, at Cerro Tololo, Chile, which was updated with you na new camera 570 megapixels in 2012.
The camera, DECam, allows you to observe very few bright objects in the space e. (The cellular cameras, by comparison, have about 12 megapixels.)
Sheppard saw the moons for the first time looking for the elusive planet 9, which is believed to exist beyond Pluto.
"Jupiter was simply in the sky near the fields where we were looking for very distant Solar System objects," says the astronomer.
But it took about a year to confirm that it was new moons.
The arduous process of confirming a To say that a bright spot is a moon it is necessary to study its trajectory for at least a year .
In this way, it will be possible to confirm that the motion of the satellite is determined by the gravitational attraction of a planet
The Center of Minor Planets Minor Planet Center, which operates at The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, Mbadachusetts under the auspices of the Union. Astronomical International, is the organization that confirms this type of discoveries in the Solar System.
And the center pointed out that what Sheppard had observed were actually new moons of Jupiter.
"Several observations are needed to confirm that an object is orbiting Jupiter," said Gareth Williams of the Minor Planet Center
Williams used the team's observations to calculate the orbits. newly discovered moons
"Retrograde" moons
Nine of the moons discovered in orbit in " retrograde direction ", that is to say in front of Jupiter's rotation.
Retrograde moons discovered take about two years to orbit around Jupiter
Two other moons are in orbit in the overhang, or in the same direction as the rotation of the planet, and take less than a year to get around it, but they are too far to collide with the retrograde.
The "weirdo"
The last discovered moon " is a lunatic and has an orbit like no other known Jovian moon ", explained Sheppard in a statement
It is likely that the the smallest known moon of Jupiter has less than one kilometer in diameter . "
This moon takes about a year and a half to travel around Jupiter and its orbit crosses in the opposite direction the orbits of the retrograde moons.
The small" strange ball "could collide head-on with the other. Other Satellites of Jupiter
"This is an unstable situation. Frontal collisions … would reduce the objects to dust, "said Sheppard.
Goddess of Hygiene
Sheppard proposed to call the new" weirdo " Valetudo the name of the Roman goddess of health and hygiene, great-granddaughter of god Jupiter.The American press pointed out that the name had been chosen by Sheppard in tribute to his girlfriend obsessed with the Hygiene who "showered several times a day."
"I think Valetudo" C is like Valetudo driving on the wrong side of the road. "
Tracks on the Solar System
] Explaining the complex influences that shaped the orbital history of a moon can reveal clues to the beginnings of the solar system, Carnegie said Institution for Science.
The discovery that small moons in different orbital groups are still abundant suggests that the collisions that created them occurred after the era of planetary formation.
In this phase, the Sun was still surrounded by a disk of gas and dust that gave birth to the planets. 19659002] Because of its size, between one and three kilometers, the new moons are more influenced by the surrounding gas and dust .
The Carnegie Institution for Science pointed out that if these materials had been present When the first moons of Jupiter collided to form the current moons, the drag exerted by the gas and the dust would have been enough for the small moons to move to Jupiter.
The existence of moons shows that probably were formed after this gas and dust dissipated .
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