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Scientists discovered twelve new moons in orbit around Jupiter, bringing the total number of natural satellites surrounding the planetary king to 79.
Discoveries include 11 "normal" outer moons, and one that scientists call a ""
The researchers, led by Scott S Sheppard of the Carnegie Institution for Science in the United States, spotted the moons last year while they were looking for a possible massive planet far beyond from Pluto, in the sky near the search fields where we were searching for extremely distant Solar System objects, we were able to search for new moons around Jupiter while searching for planets on the periphery of our Solar System, "Sheppard said.
Nine of the new moons are part of a distant outer swarm of moons that orbit it in retrograde rotation, or the opposite direction of the rotation rotation of Jupiter.
These distant retrograde moons are grouped in It is thought that they are the remains of three formerly larger parent bodies that broke in collisions with asteroids, comets, or other moons
Retrograde Moons New discoveries take about two years to orbit around Jupiter.
Two of the new discoveries are part of a group of moons nearest, internally, orbiting in the prograde, or in the same direction as the rotation of the planet
"Our other discovery is a real ball and another jovian moon known orb.This is probably the smallest known moon of Jupiter, having less than one kilometer in diameter, "says Sheppard.
This new "weird" moon is more distant and more inclined than the prograde group of moons and takes about a year and a half for Orbit Jupiter
So, unlike the nearest prograde moon group, this new eccentric prograde moon has an orbit that runs through the outer retrograde moons.
As a result, frontal collisions are much more likely to occur between the "weird" prograde and the retrograde moons, which move in opposite directions.
The team think that this little moon prograde "eccentric" could be the last remaining of a moon orbiting prograde once The name of Valetudo was proposed to him, after the rear-small daughter of the Roman god Jupiter, goddess of health and hygiene.PTI
Jupiter t The sky near the research fields where we were looking for extremely distant Solar System objects, so we were able to search for new ones moons around Jupiter while searching for planets on the periphery of our Solar System
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