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Four hundred years after Galileo used his early telescope to find the first moons on Jupiter, astronomers continue to discover more and among them the kamikaze moon of Jupiter.
The recent discovery of twelve other satellite bodies around the giant planet leaves the total at 79, the largest number of moons of any planet in our solar system.
Among the new moons discovered there is one called "kamikaze" because of its unusual orbit in the opposite direction of its 78 sisters. 19659002] Experts dubbed it "the weird" but it was the girlfriend of Scott Sheppard, scientist at the Carnegie Scientific Institute in Washington who led the discovery team , who invented the official name: Valetudo, the great-granddaughter of the Roman god Jupiter.
Discovered a dozen new #lunas of # Jupiter by the Instituto Cernnegie, including a rare specimen that received the name of #Valetudo .
The discovery of this dozen moons brings the total number of Jupiterian satellites to 79. # astronomy pic.twitter.com/oXGVel0g7n– Ramon Drudis (@R_Drudis) ]] July 17, 2018
"It's as if Valetudo was driving down the road in the opposite direction," Sheppard said, adding that "frontal collisions are likely."
The "Kamikaze Moon" is in the ring further away from Jupiter, turning in the opposite direction to the rotation of the planet and against the other moons.
The hypothesis is that Valetudo and similar moons appeared shortly after the formation of the planet. Probably in the beginning Jupiter acted like a magnet, attracting all the matter around him. The Discovery
The experts were looking for objects outside of our solar system last year when they pointed their telescopes at the Jupiter area, Scott Sheppard said. They detected a row of objects that were lying around the huge gaseous planet, but they did not know whether they were moons or asteroids
"This was not a discovery sudden, but it took a year to determine what these objects were. " that they were the moons of Jupiter. A few days ago, the identity of two of them was confirmed and that of the other ten on Tuesday.
Moons have long remained unnoticed because they are extremely small, with a diameter of one or two kilometers, said Gareth Williams, of the Center of Minor Planets of the Astronomical Institute, who believes that Jupiter has even more of those tiny moons that have not been discovered.
"We have not observed this area enough," said Williams, who confirmed the orbits of the moons, and added that "the amazing thing about these moons is that they are residues of the raw material of the planet. "
To confirm the existence of these satellites, telescopes were used in Chile, Hawaii and Arizona. The largest moons of Jupiter – Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto – in 1610. The current total includes eight moons that have not been seen in recent years. Among the other planets that have more moons, we find Saturn with 61, Uranus with 27 and Neptune with 14. Mars has two, Earth has one, Mercury and Venus have none.
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