Astronomers discover 12 new moons orbiting Jupiter - one on collision course with the others

[Intranuclear]

A head-on collision between two Jovian moons would create a crash so large it would be visible from earth

https://www.theguardian.com/science/...biting-jupiter

(click on image to enlarge)

One of a dozen new moons discovered around Jupiter is circling the planet on a suicide orbit that will inevitably lead to its violent destruction, astronomers say.

Researchers in the US stumbled upon the new moons while hunting for a mysterious ninth planet that is postulated to lurk far beyond the orbit of Neptune, the most distant planet in the solar system.

The team first glimpsed the moons in March last year from the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, but needed more than a year to confirm that the bodies were locked in orbit around the gas giant. “It was a long process,” said Scott Sheppard, who led the effort at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington DC.

Jupiter, the largest planet in the solar system, was hardly short of moons before the latest findings. The fresh haul of natural satellites brings the total number of Jovian moons to 79, more than are known to circle any other planet in our cosmic neighborhood.

(click on image to enlarge)


Nine of the new moons belong to an outer group that orbit Jupiter in retrograde, meaning they travel in the opposite direction to the planet’s spin. They are thought to be the remnants of larger parent bodies that were broken apart in collisions with asteroids, comets and other moons. Each takes about two years to circle the planet.

Two more of the moons are in a group that circle much closer to the planet in prograde orbits which travel in the same direction as Jupiter’s spin. Most likely to be pieces of a once larger moon that was broken up in orbit, they take nearly a year to complete a lap around Jupiter. Which direction the moons swing around the planet depends on how they were first captured by Jupiter’s gravitational field.

Astronomers describe the twelfth new Jovian moon as an “oddball”. Less than a kilometre wide, the tiny body circles Jupiter on a prograde orbit but at a distance that means it crosses the path of other moons hurtling towards it. Scientists have named the new moon Valetudo after the Roman god Jupiter’s great-granddaughter, the goddess of health and hygiene. But given the impending violence, it may be more than coincidence that Vale Tudo, which translates from Portuguese as “anything goes”, is an early form of full-contact mixed martial arts.

“Valetudo is like driving down the highway on the wrong side of the road,” said Sheppard. “It is moving prograde while all the other objects at a similar distance from Jupiter are moving retrograde. Thus head-on collisions are likely.”

Sheppard, whose report appears in the International Astronomical Union Minor Planet Electronic Circular, suspects that Valetudo is the final remnant of a once much larger moon that has been ground to dust by collisions in the past.

Which raises the question of how long the tiny moon has left. “Collisions don’t happen all that frequently, every billion years or so,” said Sheppard. “If one did happen, we would be able to detect it from Earth, but it is unlikely to happen anytime soon.”

[Cidersomerset]

Scientists Discover Twelve New Moons Orbiting Jupiter, One Of Them Is An Oddity | Mach | NBC News

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=M_ty8lt7Bow

Published on 18 Jul 2018
Some of the newfound moons orbit Jupiter in the same direction as the planet’s
rotation, while others orbit in the opposite direction. But one of the moons is odd
because its orbit has an unusual tilt and it circles Jupiter at a distance that puts
it at risk of a head-on collision with other Jovian moons.

[Zak247]

I guess they don’t really know how many moons there are in the solar system. Before this discovery they some said it was 181 and some places 183. This makes it 193. Of course likely they’ll find more.

[amor]

Since this new moon, seemingly on a collision course is only a mile wide, well within mother ship size range, if it encounters anything it does not wish to land on, you will just see a hiccup in its "orbit" and it will continue on its way. Take a closer look. Is it another "Moon" with constructed insides????

[Joe from the Carolinas]

Maybe it’s just me, but I wonder how attentive these astronomers are from a visual perspective. They’ve been studying and sending missions closer to Jupiter for HOW LONG? And now there are more objects out there?

I might be simple but if they’re unable to count moons, what else are they missing? Maybe the public has better eyesight, and we’d learn more faster if they release all their data.

[ichingcarpenter]

Posted by Joe from the Carolinas (here)
Maybe it’s just me, but I wonder how attentive these astronomers are from a visual perspective. They’ve been studying and sending missions closer to Jupiter for HOW LONG? And now there are more objects out there?

I might be simple but if they’re unable to count moons, what else are they missing? Maybe the public has better eyesight, and we’d learn more faster if they release all their data.

It is the outermost of the Galilean moons. Because of its orbiting distance from Jupiter (about 1,168,000 miles or 1,880,000 kilometers) it takes about seven Earth-days to make one complete orbit of the planet......... these new moons discovered take 2 years to orbit Jupiter which makes them at least 10 times the distance or more. After reading the reports I don't think they were hiding data






The team found the new moons almost by accident, thanks to a serendipitous alignment of Jupiter with their initial research project and some recently installed telescope technology.

What I think is curious is that mainstream astronomers no longer question the 10th planet and are even discussing that something happened between mars and jupiter and even in the outer kepler belt that caused Neptune and Pluto to exhibit rotational and orbital anomalies .

They still haven't really figured out why Venus acts like it does, her day is longer than her year and then she rotates backwards as compared to all the other planets....

Corey said he went to Jupiter last year wonder why he didn't tell us about these new moons we just discovered?