12 Undiscovered Jupiter's moons previously announced by astronomers

Astronomers discovered 12 other moons in orbit around Jupiter, bringing the total to 79.

The International Astronomical Union, the world authority on the recognition of celestial bodies, issued Tuesday the orbits of the new moons of Jupiter, identified by a team. of astronomers at the Washington DC Carnegie Institution for Science

None of the new moons are more than 2 miles in diameter, which is why they have not been noticed before. Astronomers have detected them using a powerful telescope in Chile that has been designed to detect weak objects in space.

Scott Sheppard, who led the team, said the moons were spotted almost by accident. The team of astronomers, who discovered in 2014 the object most orbiting the sun, was looking for other objects on the periphery of our solar system

"Jupiter was located just in the sky near the research fields where we were in search of extremely distant objects of the solar system, so we were able to search for new moons around Jupiter while searching for planets on the periphery of our solar system, "said Sheppard.

Two of the new moons in orbit Jupiter closer to the planet than the others, moving in the same direction as its rotation rotation Nine others are part of a distant swarm external moons that move in the opposite direction of Jupiter's rotation.

The last moon is an "eccentric ball", according to Sheppard's team, because she has an orbit like no other moon jovienn This moon, named Valetudo after the Roman goddess of health and hygiene, is also in the outside swarm but moves in the opposite direction of her peers

. Valetudo's idiosyncratic path increases the likelihood that she will one day go astray and collide with her. "It's an unstable situation," Sheppard said. "The frontal collisions would break quickly and reduce the objects to dust."

Moons were discovered a year ago, but the IAU usually requires a year of calculations to confirm the existence of newly discovered moons.