A dozen new satellite moons have been discovered orbiting Jupiter, a planet well known for its huge size and multitude of previously discovered moons.
Researchers at the Minor Planet Center, which operates at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory under the International Astronomical Union, have been tracking the orbits of these previously unknown moons around Jupiter since December. Their discovery brings the planet’s final moon count to 92 — a figure that overtakes Saturn, which used to have the most moons in the solar system with 83.
Astronomers discovered these new moons using data gathered between 2021 and 2022, Sky & Telescope reported.
According to NASA, due to Jupiter’s massive size and immense gravitational pull, its many moons orbit around it at different speeds and distances, like a mini solar system.
As for the newly discovered celestial bodies, each is small and has an orbital period of at least 340 days. For perspective, the Earth’s Moon has an orbital period of 27 days.
However, nine of the new moons are Jovian moons. This means that they are furthest from the gas giant planet and have an orbital period of over 550 days, Sky & Telescope reported.
Not all of Jupiter’s moons move in the same direction either. Jovial moons, which tend to be smaller and formed due to collisions between larger satellites, are usually found in a retrograde rotation in relation to their orbits. This means the celestial body spins in the opposite direction as it moves.
While the nine new Jovian moons are moving in this way, the other three new moons are orbiting in a prograde direction, Sky & Telescope reported. These moons orbit between the larger and closer Galilean moons and the more distant Jovian moons.
Scott Sheppard, an astronomer from the Carnegie Institute for Science, who submitted the observations, told Sky & Telescope that the moons closer to the planet were actually harder to discover than the more distant ones.
“The reason is that they are closer to Jupiter and the scattered light from the planet is tremendous,” said Sheppard, Sky & Telescope reported.
Sheppard is credited with discovering other Jovian moons, such as Aoede, Autonoe, Dia, and Erinome, in previous years.
Despite Jupiter now having the most recorded moons in the solar system, some scientists believe that Saturn, also a gas-giant planet, could have even more that have not yet been counted.
Research conducted in 2021 and published by the American Astronomical Society looked at objects around 1.86 miles in size orbiting Saturn. It concluded that three to four times as many of these objects are in close proximity to the ringed gas giant in comparison to Jupiter.
Like the new retrograde moons around Jupiter, these smaller objects — approximately 120 in number — are theorized to have formed as the result of a collision that occurred a few hundred million years ago.
Brett Gladman, an astronomer at the University of British Columbia in Canada, told Sky & Telescope that if such small objects were counted as moons, “Saturn would have more moons than all the rest of the solar system.”