43 More Moons Discovered Orbiting Jupiter

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."

Comments

How convenient!

[cbiffle]

Now we can call them, what, Sheppard moons? But Jupiter's ring is so insignificant!

Ahhhh, astronomy puns.

Definitely a rising star...

[0x69]

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.

Re:Definitely a rising star...

[CanSpice]

Actually, grad students at the University of Hawaii are privileged in that UH gets telescope time on every telescope on the mountain for free, either 10 or 15% of all allocated time. This puts UH staff and students in an enviable position where they do not have to go through stricter reviews in order to get telescope time on some of the best telescopes in the world.

Some (if not most) of the telescopes on Mauna Kea are oversubscribed, which means that for every night of available observing time they have more than one night of applications. More clearly stated, when applications roll in the total number of nights applied for might be, say, 150 nights in a six-month period when there might only be 100 nights available.

That's for regular applicants. Remember that UH gets 10 to 15% of the time straight off the top. There are some telescopes on Mauna Kea where the UH observers don't know what to do with their time!

And for what it's worth, there aren't that many jobs available for moon hunters. It's an extremely small field and, in my opinion, an extremely uninteresting one from any kind of theoretical point of view. All you do is get a big telescope with a wide field camera, point it just off the side of Jupiter, take a bunch of pictures, and see if anything moved. There's little innovation or new ideas involved, which is why something like this was left to a grad student.

And it's not like you need to have a PhD to get published. As an undergrad student I was published twice and had posters involving my work presented at two or three conferences. And some of that work was using possibly the most famous telescope of all -- the Hubble Space Telescope.

Not to degrade Mr. Sheppard's discovery, but it's not that big a deal, really.

Re:Definitely a rising star...

[astrobabe]

I don't think the big profs count the 2.2 and 3.6 meter telescopes as a top tier toy. As an undergrad at Arizona I had regular access to a 2.3 meter and a 2.4 meter telescope on Kitt Peak immediately after my freshman year. Part of this was due to having a nice advisor and some of it was because everyone else was trying to use bigger telescopes like the MMT and Magellan.

Seeing as this guy is at Hawaii I'm betting the fights over the 2 to 3 meter class telescopes is no where near the fights people would get into over the much bigger (10 meter class) WM Keck telescopes

And after only an undergrad degree I have a cushy job in astronomy at the SIRTF Science Center that pays more than some astro postdocs. . . .

Re:Definitely a rising star...

[t0qer]

Not to degrade Mr. Sheppard's discovery, but it's not that big a deal, really.

Got to disagree with you there...

What this guy did was add to a map of the solar system. Finding these moons means we don't have to worry about crashing billion dollar probes into them because "I didn't know it was there"

Your comment sounds more like jealousy than critique.
As an undergrad student I was published twice and had posters involving my work presented at two or three conferences.

Yeah but I bet you never had your work published and slashdotted!

eBay?

[AtariAmarok]

Can I get one on eBay?

Re:What's the total?

[NanoGator]

"Since when did the earth have two moons? Is it possible to see the other one? "

That's no moon....

Re:What's the total?

[PD]

Earth has a 'moon' in a very strange horseshoe shaped orbit, and it's named Cruithne.

http://burtleburtle.net/bob/physics/cruithne.htm l

It's pronounced Croo-EEN-ya, which is Celtic I think.

Re:What's the total?

[geoswan]

And this story is just an update to these two stories.

And no, Earth is not known to have two moons, unless you use a really weird definition of "moon". And if you use that weird definition, it would not be two, it would be three.

double-take

[Sherloqq]

*sigh* I had to re-read the title, cause at first glance the conversation didn't match the topic...

• 43 Morons Discovered Orbiting Jupiter

oh...

Not a moon, IMHO

[boarder]

According to this site: Wikipedia, Cruithne is an asteroid that shares Earth's orbit about the Sun, but doesn't actually orbit Earth. This site has more technical information.

Mars has a co-orbital asteroid and Jupiter has 400 captured asteroids, but they aren't considered moons. They are just asteroids, as is this one.

So in my opinion, since this is just an asteroid of small size and it doesn't truly orbit our planet, it shouldn't be called a moon.

Re:Not a moon, IMHO

[barakn]

The "400 captured asteroids" aren't called moons, not because they are asteroids, but because they are not moons, i.e. they are not captured. They are Trojans that orbit the sun (not Jupiter) with the same period as Jupiter. And there's over 1600 of them.