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43 More Moons Discovered Orbiting Jupiter

Posted by michael on from the space-junk dept.

linuxwrangler writes "Scott S. Sheppard, a graduate student at the University of Hawaii, has discovered 43 more moons orbiting Jupiter more than doubling the number of known Jovian moons. The small moons, which follow wildly irregular orbits, are thought to be the result of ancient collisions of larger moons. Sheppard used a 2.2 and a 3.6 meter telescope at the Mauna Kea observatory to catalog the moons."

1 of 41 comments (clear)

  1. Definitely a rising star... by 0x69 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    A young grad student is getting time on some of professional astronomy's top-tier toys, then publishing his results in Nature? Very interesting indeed...

    Even if it's a fix, this guy seems a shoe-in to get (*extremely* scarce) good job offers in astronomy.

    --
    It's easy to make up & spread cool- and credible-sounding stuff. Finding & checking hard facts is hard work.