New Satellites of Jupiter Discovered

dss902 writes "The discovery of 18 new satellites of Jupiter, bringing the total of known Jupiter satellites to 58 were made using the world's two largest digital cameras at the Subaru (8.3 meter diameter) and Canada-France-Hawaii (3.6 meter diameter) telescopes atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii. Recoveries were performed at the University of Hawaii 2.2 meter with help from Yanga Fernandez and Henry Hsieh also from the University of Hawaii. Brian Marsden of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics performed the orbit fitting for the new satellites. More info here." We ran a story on the first eight, but now... eighteen.

Comments

I doubt that the observations are correct.

[Krapangor]

Such small satellites must have orbits very near to Jupiter, about 1/3 of the Earth-Moon distance. This is similar like Mercury being the smallest planet of the solar system. (Pluto is not a planet but a moon of Uranus at a nonlinear chaotic trajectory around teh center of the Uranus/Sun dual-system.)
But Jupiter is a much larger planet than earth about 254 earth masses. So these satellites must rotate much faster around Jupiter, if they don't want to be sucked onto its surface by gravitation. A simple calculation show that they must in fact have 1/5 of light speed which is relatively unlikely.
So, I suppose that these astronomer guys have an error in their calculations.