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Jupiter's Eleven New Moons

Posted by michael on from the rock-paper-scissors dept.

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."

2 of 37 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Shoemaker by Gogo+Dodo · · Score: 4, Informative
    Jupiter is a gas giant, there really isn't a "surface" per se. There may be a molten core in the center, but Shoemaker-Levy wasn't that big of a comet to eject matter that far out.

    What's more plausable is that these moons are remnants of impacts on other moons. Read the Space.com article on the moons.

  2. Re:More links by CheshireCatCO · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.