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(CNN) –
During a search for Planet Nine, a mysterious planet considered to be on the edge of our solar system, astronomers discovered something else: 12 new moons around Jupiter. And one of them is quite strange.
The findings bring the number of known Jupiter moons to 79, the largest amount around a single planet in our solar system.
But why are scientists now finding these moons? The technology allows to observe Jupiter in more detail and the surrounding area, which shows that many discoveries are still waiting to be found in the corner of our universe
Thus, they have found the moons
In March 2017, Jupiter was the perfect place to observe the Blanco telescope at the Inter-American Observatory of Cerro Tololo in Chile, which owns the Black Energy Chamber and can inspect the sky for barely visible objects.
Astronomer Scott Sheppard of the Carnegie Institution for Science and his team used the telescope to look for signs of the planet Nine at the edge of the solar system. They realized that they could observe Jupiter at the same time.
They would be able to distinguish the difference between Jupiter and the objects surrounding it from distant objects in the solar system because any object around Jupiter would move at the same speed as the gas giant. Objects far from the solar system can not move as fast.
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A new larger camera in the telescope allowed the team to cover a higher percentage of sky . Your capacity is now 10 times greater. And because Jupiter is the largest planet in our solar system, astronomers must be able to see as much space as possible.
Because Jupiter is also a brilliant planet, astronomers have had to deal with the problem of glare. "The new cameras allow us to cover all the space around Jupiter in some images, and this camera is well shaded," Sheppard explains.
They discovered 12 moons, but the process of observation and confirmation, using several telescopes, took about a year.
Nine of the new moons were found far from Jupiter, some 25 million kilometers, moving in a retrograde orbit (the opposite of the planet's rotation). It takes about two Earth years to orbit the planet. Sheppard and his team believe that these moons are remnants of three larger moons that separated when they collided with other moons, asteroids or comets
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two new moons are closer and move in a programmed orbit, which corresponds to the direction in which Jupiter moves. Given its distance and angle from Jupiter, they are also pieces of a moon that was once larger. It takes less than a year to orbit the gas giant.
And then there is the strange moon. Sheppard believes it could be the smallest of Jupiter, and has a different orbit than any other moon on the planet.
Valetudo was nicknamed by the Roman goddess of health and hygiene, great-granddaughter of the god Jupiter.
It has a programmed orbit but it is more distant and has a different inclination. This means that he is going through with the outer retrograde moons and could collide with them. Basically, Sheppard explained that the road was in the wrong direction.
These new moons were probably formed in part of our solar system known as the giant region of the planet, located between the rock-asteroid-dominated asteroid belt, and the Kuiper belt, dominated by icy comets.
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