Slashdot Mirror
New Jovian Moon Discovered
Mr. GuySmiley writes: "Astronomers of the SpaceWatch Project have discovered a
another moon orbiting Jupiter. It has been over 25 years since the last discovery of an outer
Jovian satellite (Voyager found three inner moons in 1979). The moon has been designated S/1999 J 1. This brings the total number of moons
orbiting Jupiter to 17. Hail the King of the Planets!"
Given that recent moons have been named after 2000 year old fictional characters I guess we'll have to wait until about 4000 AD before we see moons like Troi and Seven of Nine. Ho hum.
--
-- SIGFPE
There is a long drawn bureaucratic process for naming any astronomical object. It will have to be approved by the International Astronomical Union before it can be officially called anything interesting. In the mean time, the astronomers are suppose to use specific designations for specific objects (not that a great many astronomers follow these designations but in press releases, at least, appearances must be maintained).
If my memory servers me, I believe that the "inner" jovian moons are those with orbits that are interior to the Galilean sattelites (Jupiter's four largest moons).
Shop Smart, Shop S-mart!
I would have liked the name 'Data'. Calling the moon 'Mr. Data' would be funny.
"My god, it's full of stars..."
Slashdot: come for the pedantry, stay for the condescension.
Or maybe Pizza Hut will pay them to name it PizzaHut.
- Justin
AFAIK the only planet that uses shakespeare for it's moons is uranus (and i wouldn't have known that if it weren't for blue mars).
Since your UID is smaller than mine, I can only conclude that you're trolling. -s20451 (410424)
I've got a very bad feeling about this...
-Effendi
I'm glad to see that they are sticking with the tradition of the roman pantheon as nomenclature.... I did a paper in university on the pre-christian festivals of S/1999J1...
2 1337 4 u!
I don't know who did this math but it is WAY off. Really, it's been about 21. Last time I checked, 21 was less than 25. But I've been out of school for a while...
I can't spell or type, but that doesn't mean I'm unusually stupid.
SOL SYSTEM - Jupiter Satellite Enterprises (JSE) was awarded the patent on "moons" today after patent reviewers said "wow, we'd have never thought of that!" JSE immediately filed lawsuits against Earth, Inc., Consolidated Mars, the Saturn Company (not affiliated with the automobile manufacturer), Uranus Systems, and Neptune Affiliates, claiming patent and intellectual property infringement.
When asked why no suits had been filed against Pluto concerning its natural satellite Charon, spokesdroids of JSE responded, "Pluto's not a real planet, just a annoying big asteroid who occasionally gets in Neptune's way." Pluto responded by saying "Piss off! Damn, it's cold out here!"
The defendents each responded quickly, with Earth, Inc., and Consolidated Mars both claiming prior use of moons, and the Saturn Company saying, "We have more moons than Jupiter, our rings are prettier, and we can float in water, so they can get bent!" Neptune Affiliates had no immediate comment, while Uranus Systems was quoted as saying "Quit making fun of our name!"
"The dead do not shoo-bop-aloo-bah." -- Kai, 'Lexx'
Jupiter is, unless I'm very much mistaken, the largest planet in the system, and Saturn sucks 'cause it floats in my bath :)
When did they discover those new moons arround Uranus? I remember it was 15 in th good old days :)
Alos, I belive that 6 of the 8 Naptunian moons are still called 1986I --> 1986VI, but I'm probably wrong. Havent done much space stuff for a few years.
What are the moons of Uranus?
Mark Duell
Good call, "Niven." Better yet, perhaps, "Hal 9000."
"..don't you eat that yellow snow."
Right! "Hal 9000" it is. Any seconds to carry motion?
"..don't you eat that yellow snow."
Shouldn't you being putting your pinky to your mouth as you intone, "two ... million ... kilometers", Dr. Evil?
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
Considering that he thinks that 1979 - 2000 is more than 25 years, the moon could actually be around Saturn.
Since we are also discovering gas giants far larger than jupiter orbiting other stars, does that mean that the[y] 'could' be protecting more inner planets than Jupiter in our solar system.
The extra-solar planets discovered so far are larger, faster moving, and closer to their star. They have not been directly observed yet, only their influence on their star has been seen.
So, protecting planets - No. Eating Planets - Maybe
-RichardFunny you should mention that!
I just submitted an "Ask Slashdot" which posed the question:
"Is it time (once again..) to ask whether the AC should be done away with to get *some* kind of control over the volume of crap that's getting posted to /."
For example, cruising at Threshold: 2, this article is currently 91.7% posts at 1 or under!
91.7%
And if you were to bother to look, the majority of 'em are plain crap!
t_t_b
--
I think not; therefore I ain't®
I'm on PJ's "enemies" list! Are you?
The "other" moon of earth is not gravitionally captured by earth. Instead its movement around the sun is synchronized with the earth in a way that make it looks like a moon, as seen from earth.
A link is here . And if you got a lot of time to kill, you could also visit this place.
Check your sources and your facts before being egregiously sarcastic: Although perhaps the construction isn't the best choice, the original article makes clear that the last outer (>11 Gm, or ) moon was discovered in 1974 while Voyager discovered three inner ( 2 Gm) moons in 1979.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
Wrong. More moons were disovered during the Voyager missions in the '70s.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
That's really the only way I ever see 'em, now that I'm cruising at Threshold: 2 -- unfortunately, probably not enough AC posts get modded up, but hey! life's tough!
Of course there's no way for any one individual AC poster to accumulate karma, if that's what you mean..
t_t_b
--
I think not; therefore I ain't®
I'm on PJ's "enemies" list! Are you?
Could this be the object described in 2001? It's the right planet and about the right size too - about 3 miles across. The press release is strangely silent about any role the Microsoft Paperclip (codename: HAL) might have played in the discovery...
Any technology which is distinguishable from magic is not sufficiently advanced.
"Whether they ever find life there or not, I think Jupiter should be considered
an enemy planet." - Jack Handey
I'm a big fan of Jupiter and it's moons. And I was initally thrilled by reading the headline. However, it quickly occured to me that a Jovial moon that has not been discovered until recently, must be tiny. A space turd, if you will. Sure enough, the article mentions an estimate for the diameter of the moon at about 3 miles. It's a bit hard to get excited about an ordinary asteroid that happened to get caught in Jupiter's gravitational field.
But, technically, it's a new moon because it orbits a planet. Of course, every man-made satellite that we've put in orbit around Jupiter, not to mention the Earth, is also, technically, a moon. Not to mention other items, like the infamous glove lost by an astronaut, which will orbit the Earth as a small, insignificant moon until getting sucked in a bit too close to the atmosphere.
I even seem to remember reading, perhaps on slashdot, about a comet with a hugely erratic orbit that scientists believe centers around the earth. So, we have 2 natural moons!
In reality, if we lived on Jupiter, and scientists told us that there was a tiny 3 mile long pebble orbitting 15 million miles from the surface that we couldn't see with our naked eye, would we call it a moon? Or would we not worry about it because we're getting squished by the massive gravitational field and dealing with the fact that we're trying to stand on a gaseous planet?
We must respect evil, and we must make evil respect us.
No doubt about it - no power involved. But Jim Scotti was in a sense doing his job by realizing that it was the right time to look, so I not much innovation there. Nevertheless, it didn't take the Hubble and the necessary support to find this moon. Almost like backyard astronomy.
Does that include this little flea too?
Why? 11000 Mm (like you said in your table) is 11x10^9 m, or 11x10^6 km, or 11 million km.
Anything orbiting a planet is a moon. The "moons" of Mars are smaller than the biggest asteroids but because they orbit mars. It just a naming thing, it doesn't mean anything scientifically.
They must be referring to the fact that Jupiter (Zeus to the Greeks) is the king of the gods in Roman mythology.
Anyone care to enlighten me on what is an *inner* moon?
I believe you're thinking of Ruprect, which, of course, may or may not be spelled this way.
--
NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
It has been over 25 years since the last discovery of an outer Jovian satellite (Voyager found three inner moons in 1979).
What did you get on your ACTs?
Good question.
First off, only 5-10 miles big is too small to always be spherical. I believe it is somewhere between 100-200 miles (160-320 km) in diameter before gravitational forces are strong enough to force a spherical shape -- assuming the mean density of most asteroids/planets which can, of course, vary greatly. Please correct me if I am wrong.
So what is the criteria for an orbiting object to be termed a "natural satellite" then? I assume it is:
-- Bryan "TheBS" Smith
-- Bryan "TheBS" Smith
Independent Author, Consultant and Trainer
I agree - it's very subjective. I wouldn't go so far as to call the billions upon billions of ice particles orbiting the larger planets moons in themselves.
By the same reasoning, Pluto (and Charon) isn't really a planet. If it was discovered today, it would probably be labelled as a double asteroid. (For convenience, too. Think of all the literature that would have to be rewritten these days if another "planet" were discovered. It'd have to be quite a major planet to be categorised as one.)
Also because it was discovered before there was a well-embedded concept of asteroids, and also during a time (1930's) when many people assumed there must be another planet. For this reason it made it's place as one of the "nine" major planets.
This reasoning hasn't exactly reached moons yet. If it's orbiting a planet and bigger than a speck of dust, it gets labelled a moon.
===
Why not call this one Micky Mouse or Donald Duck?
Scientists did not comment on Russian findings that the newly discovered moon is in fact the shape of black rectangular slab, and that chimpanzees in an space physics laboratory began to jump up and down at its discovery, ultimately bashing each other to pieces with their feed trays.
This is my sig.
I think Saturn's the car. Otherwise astronomer's would have to Saaat-uuurn all the time.
Intolerant people should be shot.
Unless, of course, anyone here has a better idea for a name... (evil grin)
----
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
I seem to recall people talking about this (astronomer type people, that is) when that comet blasted the crap out of Jupiter a few years ago. (Shoemaker-Levy? or is mind _completely_ shot?) Jupiter (and Saturn to a lesser extent) has been acting like a vacuum for alot of big nasty rocks that would otherwise still be zipping into the inner solar system to this day. Can you imagine a Halley every 8 months, or a Shoemaker-Levy ever couple years? Someone might actually start looking for ways to protect Earth, instead of talking about it. Of course, we would almost never have survived long enough to figure out how helpful big gravity wells in the outer solar system can be.
I believe that it was also said that the moon manages to snag alot of hits that managed to come close to Earth too, although those would've been more asteroids than comets, I suppose.
Intolerant people should be shot.
To be sure, tidal forces are putting the pinch on IO, but they are not strong enough to tear it apart, otherwise it would have been torn apart a long time ago. The "trail of debris" is mostly sodium that has been launched into orbit by IO's volcanos.
Shop Smart, Shop S-mart!
"An estimated 5 to 10 miles in diameter, that 1974 discovery, named Leda"
So what does it take to become a moon? I mean, 5 to 10 miles is not very big, in my mind at least. Is it merely a size issue or are there other things taken into consideration?
-Frijoles-
Actually, Jupiter can provide quite a bit of coverage, over time. The orbits of comets are not generally going to be in sync with Jupiter's orbit, so it's only a matter of time before a comet (especially a short period comet) has a close call with Jupiter and is either captured or flung out of the solar system.
Shop Smart, Shop S-mart!
that it doesn't take obscene amounts of money to make discoveries. I'm glad that smaller projects still tend to lead the field in terms of innovation, if not in terms of raw power.
Yeah, I just read it yesterday for the 1st time, perty good for a Douglas Adams book
I would have thought that with Galileo and V'ger having gone out there, the area -- er I mean -- the space was already pretty well studied. I guess science never ends.
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Might be appropriate. I wrote the software that found it, and I worked completely under Linux! Jeffrey Larsen, Spacewatch
That's no moon. That's a space station!
Does anyone know at what rate the technology NASA / whoever uses to seek moons and extraterrestrial objects advances at?
:) Astronomy isn't my thing but it's interesting :)
The likelihood of there being other moons around Juipiter, or any other gaseous planet for the matter, is pretty good as far as I've read and know...
So it'd be a matter of time before we discover them, and the rate of technological advance in this situation might...
Well, just a little curious
If you FEED the Troll, you have to take it HOME, and keep it!
F'ing Trolls!
"Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without your accordion." - Jed Babbin
All These Worlds Are Yours-- Except S/1999 J 1. Attempt No Landings There.
Joke? Baaah. I find your lack of faith...
Actually, *Uranus* has more moons too. (No jokes please.) The current totals: Mercury 0 Venus 0 Earth 1 (not counting Iridia :-)) Mars 2 Jupiter 17 Saturn 18 Uranus 21 Neptune 8 Pluto 1
Hmmm. Interesting. But Jupiter's orbit is so much larger than ours, how much coverage can it really provide? It seems to me that we don't coincide with it that much. On the other hand, it's intriguing to wonder how many comets have been pulled just a few miles off course by a gas giant and thus drastically affected other planets.
Wow. This is going to keep me up all night...
-J
Karma: T-rexcellent.
Umm.. obviously they would name it MoonHut.
was discovered, if 3 moons were discovered in
1979?
Pick them nits,
-Karl
http://www.red-bean.com/kfogel
Pretty original. Why can't they pick something more modern? How about names from sci-fi classics? Why not call it Spock?
I think we should call it Planet of the Apes!
Current thought is that Jupiter (along with the other gas giants) are responsible for the formation of the Oort cloud, the spherical halo of comets out at the edge of the solar system). All the comets formed much closer to the sun than they are now, but were subsequently ejected into the outer solar system by the giant planets.
Shop Smart, Shop S-mart!
Also, contact Pizza Hut for possible franchising opportunities:
"Pizza Hut is a pioneer in space commercialization" - Rick Hieb.
So sorry.
Not to be picky, here, but I believe that Saturn has more moons than Jupiter. Of course, the poster didn't say that, but I just wanted to be sure that nobody inferred incorrectly. :-)
[Thanks to Students of the Exploration and Development of Space (www.seds.org) for the reference. Check out for a list of all the named moons for both.]
So, for completness' sake:
Also, I believe that all moons (except Luna) are named after Roman mythological figures, except those of Uranus, which are from more modern literature (Shakespeare and Pope). This is not a recent phenomena, the first discovered moon of Uranus was named in 1787 (by Herschel). So he's the visonary who bucked the trend. :-)
How big was that monolith by Jupiter anyway?
Donate background CPU time to fight cancer.
All these worlds
are yours except
Europa
Attempt no
landing there
Use them together
Use them in peace
--
Yomigaeru Aiyan Geek!!!
I think AC's should remain, but if they get modded, they should still affect the poster.
Fear the government that fears your guns. Fear the government that fears your computers. Remove them from my email.
The moon has been designated S/1999 J 1.
Pretty original. Why can't they pick something more modern? How about names from sci-fi classics? Why not call it Spock?
kwsNI
I remember that, too. I think it was a PBS special on when Shoemaker-Levy/9 (RIP Eugene) after it slammed into Jupiter. Jupiter barely shuddered, but the plume on the fragment G was larger than the Earth.
The international astronomy organisation (IAU?) did float a proposal to redesignate Pluto as a minor planet last year. Got voted down mainly due to opposition from the American side as Pluto is the only "planet" discovered by an American. (Clyde Tombaugh)
Personally I see their point, Pluto is smaller than our Moon and has a pretty wacky orbit for a planet. And apparantly although Tombaugh did use good science to track it, it's only dumb luck that he found it as Pluto does not account for the perturbation of the orbits of Uranus and Neptune.
Personally, I'm thinking something along the lines of "Rupert".
----
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
We've at least got the Space Shuttle Enterprise (okay, so that was only a quasi-space shuttle) and Deep Space 1..
This to the idiot who moderated me down
It was a funny, and as far as i know an accurate observation.
--
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Perhaps after funding the launch of the latest ISS rocket, Pizza Hut will start funding planetary body searches, on the condition that they get to name whatever they find..
Dateline October, 2015: Jupiter's 18th and 19th moons, named for the company that funded their discovery, are known as Meat Lovers and Big Foot.
This type of thing makes me wonder, how much garbage has Jupiter (and our other gas giant planets) colelcted and thus reduced the chance of a major impact on earth.
Since we are also discovering gas giants far larger than jupiter orbiting other stars, does that mean that the 'could' be protecting more inner planets than Jupiter in our solar system.
Makes ya wonder.
www.mp3.com/Undocumented
www.mp3.com/Undocumented
Where for art thou, S/1999 J 1.
Ring a bell?
RMS proposed it actually be called GNU/S/1999 J 1.
--
Communication is only possible between equals
Its sad but true, look at the planets.
Mercury - named after Mercury Technologies
Venus - Well, this was a joint investment from Venus Internet (UK) and Venus the semi-porn site.
Earth - Well, thats pretty original I guess.
Mars - Bar anyway?
Jupiter - Financial investment company
Saturn - Sega's amazing console
Uranus - Andrex?
Neptune - Neptune Refrigeration poured a lot into this planet
Pluto - From Disney's favourite dog
And peopel complain about Pizza Hut advertising on the moon, its about the only place left!
I'm getting tired of all this slashdot spam.
Fear the government that fears your guns. Fear the government that fears your computers. Remove them from my email.
Rock on Jupiter! It's good to know Jupiter is getting action and still making babies. Hey, that's more action than a lot of us geeks (myself included) have gotten latey! :)
Well, this is the reason they went to school for stargazing instead of math :)
[SARCASM] If NASA can't do American -> metric conversions to land something on Mars, why should the Spacewatch project be able to subtract 1979 from 2000?
Or do you actually expect our scientists to be able to be bothered by such simple problems when they are so busy calculating things like the GUT? :)
[/SARCASM]
Ender-
Don't get me wrong, I'm glad we've got scientists working on such things. But sometimes they need to get their brains back to the real world...
Nothing to see here
It's the first outer moon to be discovered in 25 years. The three moons discovered in 1979 (Metis, Adrastea, and Thebe) are inner moons. The distinction between inner and outer moons arises from the fact that there are eight moons at a distance less than 2 million kilometers (the "inner" moons) and ten moons at a distance greater than 11 million kilometers. There are no moons between 2 and 11 million kilometers.
Satellite Dist(Mm) Found
--------- -------- -----
Metis 128 1979
Adrastea 129 1979
Amalthea 181 1892
Thebe 222 1979
Io 422 1610
Europa 671 1610
Ganymede 1070 1610
Callisto 1883 1610
Leda 11094 1974
Himalia 11480 1904
Lysithea 11720 1938
Elara 11737 1905
Ananke 21200 1951
Carme 22600 1938
Pasiphae 23500 1908
Sinope 23700 1914
S/1999 J1 24000 2000
my blog
I mean 2 and 11 billion kilometers. Doh.
my blog
The set of encylcopedias that my father handed down to me (which he laboriously garnered from a grocery-store installment system in the 1950's) say otherwise. Jupiter has only 12 moons.
IMHO, the crap name given to the moon (S/1999 J 1) is only temporary until they can raise corporate sponsorship - expect the name to soon be changed to "TheMoon.com" or "AOL Time Warner, in association with Jupiter" or "SlashMoon".
Any technology which is distinguishable from magic is not sufficiently advanced.
------------------------
------------------------
Thus Spake ComradePenguin