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!"
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).
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!
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.
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.
"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-
That's no moon. That's a space station!
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.]
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
RMS proposed it actually be called GNU/S/1999 J 1.
--
Communication is only possible between equals
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.