Thanks to astronomers Scott Sheppard, David Tholen, and Chadwick Trujillo, Earth giant neighbour has added two new moons to its existing roster – bringing the total moon count to 69.
Until last week Jupiters catalogued satellites totalled 67. 15 of these orbit Jupiter in line with the planets spin, with the rest orbiting in the opposite direction – making them likely to be captured debris from the rest of the solar system.
Movies of two newly discovered Jupiter moons (Bottom S/2016 J1; Top S/2017 J1) showing their motion relative to background stars and galaxies; find out more at home.dtm.ciw.edu
The new additions are only around one to two kilometres in size. They were spotted when the team was surveying distant objects in the Kuiper Belt.
NASA’s Juno spacecraft captured this epic time-lapse of the planet’s moons during the spacecraft’s approach in 2016
The moons have been named S/2016 J1 and S/2017 J1. They and are 21 million km and 24 million km from Jupiter
