REAL LIFE NEWS: JUPITER INCREASES ITS NUMBER OF MOONS
by Hazed
Two more natural satellites have been added to the list of bodies orbiting Jupiter. That means the giant planet now has 69 moons.
The new rocks are about 1-2 km in size and were spotted by astronomers Scott Sheppard, David Tholen, and Chadwick Trujillo. They were examining images from a survey of distant objects in the Kuiper Belt, but Jupiter just happened to show up in the photos as well.
15 of Jupiter’s satellites are close to the planet and orbit in the same direction as the planet’s spin. The rest are retrograde, meaning they orbit in the other direction. A few of the outer moons are 20-60 km in diameter but most of them are small, about 1-2 km in size, and the two new moons join them. So far, their only names are S/2016 J1 and S/2017 J1 but I expect they will be given more interesting designations.
