“I doubt we will get close to any of them, or even be able to “see” them with any instrument,” she said. So far, they have not found a flyby opportunity closer than a million kilometers (620,000 miles) - more than twice the distance between the Earth and the Moon. The only opportunity to visit an outer moon could come as the probes enter the system.īonnie Buratti, the deputy project scientist for Europa Clipper, said that her team was conducting an analysis to see if Clipper’s inbound trajectory could be nudged to send it past an outer moon. ![]() Two new spacecraft will arrive at the planet in the coming years: NASA’s Europa Clipper in 2030, and the European Space Agency’s JUICE one year later.īoth spacecraft must be injected into precise orbits that will allow them to study Jupiter’s inner moons. Many scientists would love to get an up-close look at one of Jupiter’s outer moons. Sheppard said about half of the new moons are big enough to get names. Only after a year of observations will the Minor Planet Center recognize them, and only objects wider than a kilometer will get names. “But by that time, you might not have a precise enough moon orbit known, and thus are not able to easily find them again,” Sheppard said.īoth Jupiter and Saturn have candidate moons that are discovered and cataloged, but not formally recognized. Some moons disappear until their orbits carry them to a more favorable viewing location. ![]() But even with a 6.5-meter (21-feet) diameter mirror enlisted for the hunt, tracking small moons next to Jupiter’s glare is a challenge. The candidate moon has to be re-observed weeks, months, and even years after its initial discovery, until its orbit is known with certainty.įor that, the team turns to the Magellan Telescopes at the Las Campanas Observatory in Chile. “At some point during the year, the planets will be at the right location at the right time,” said Sheppard.Ī new point of light moving near Jupiter does not automatically get awarded moon status. When that happens, the team aims for the region of space right next to the planet, to see if they can pick up any bonus moons. Occasionally, the portion of sky being surveyed crosses paths with Jupiter or Saturn. These powerful telescopes have instruments that allow them to survey the sky relatively quickly, looking for dim specks moving in the darkness. Blanco Telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. The search was conducted using the Subaru Telescope on Maunakea, Hawaiʻi, and the Víctor M. Scott Sheppard, a faculty member at the Carnegie Institution for Science, Earth and Planets Laboratory in Washington, D.C., is part of a team looking for dwarf planets beyond Pluto. The scientists that found the 12 new moons of Jupiter weren’t looking for them at all, in a manner of speaking. While a spacecraft uses thrusters, small moons entering Jupiter’s orbit could have relied on timely encounters with an ice giant or drag from gas left over from the planet’s formation. ![]() Just like a spacecraft approaching a planet, a moon must slow down to enter orbit. ![]() How Jupiter captured these moons is a mystery. That means they could be examples of small worlds from the planet’s original neighborhood. The parent bodies of the retrograde moons were likely free-flying worlds, possibly from the primitive Kuiper Belt, captured by Jupiter’s gravity long ago. That means they may contain the recipe of elements that formed the gas giant billions of years ago. Most of these outer moons formed from collisions that chipped small fragments off of larger parent moons in the same orbit. The parent bodies of the prograde moons likely formed in place with Jupiter. Jupiter’s outer moons fall into two categories: prograde moons, which orbit closer to Jupiter and in the same direction as the planet’s rotation, and retrograde moons, which orbit farther from Jupiter and in the opposite direction as the planet’s rotation. They are instead members of the planet’s irregular satellites - comparatively small outer moons with distant, atypical orbits. Jupiter’s new moons are not as large and flashy as the Galilean moons Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |