Slashdot Mirror
Jupiter's Eleven New Moons
nautical9 writes "Yahoo is reporting that scientists have discovered 11 new moons orbiting around Jupiter, bringing the total to 39. They were discovered using the Canada-France-Hawaii telescope and one of the largest digital imaging cameras in the world. Unfortunately, very little is known about them at this point other than that they're relatively small (compared to the previously known ones), and they all have irregular orbits."
What's more plausable is that these moons are remnants of impacts on other moons. Read the Space.com article on the moons.
Eccentric, irregular and long, eliptical orbits generally mean that the satellite has been captured by the planet's gravity - i.e. the satellite is an asteroid that passed through Jupiter's gravity field with insufficent velocity to escape.
Some of these satellites may develop stable orbits, others are likely to eventually either escape Jupiter's gravity well or fall into the planet. Most of these satellites would cross the orbits of other satellites (the long, elliptical orbits compared to the more stable almost-circular orbits) and these other bodies will have a large effect on the fate of the captured satellite.
The story on space.com has more details on this.
Also see the offical offical press release from University of Hawaii.
Someone who was on one of the moon-hunting teams worried about that to me about a year ago. I compiled a list of 50 names of nurses and paramours of Jupiter with a simply search, so I'm not quite worried, yet. Another 11 and we'll need to get concerned.
That's its *name*. Look: CFHT.
This was the number one hit on Google for 'canada france hawaii'. Do a bit of research on the telescopes you're posting about, before you just generalize!
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.