15
May 2003
Jupiter's moons: By Jove
By the year 2000 Jupiter had 16 known satellites, but that number has steadily risen as a survey using some of the world's largest digital cameras has progressed. The latest ultrasensitive charge-coupled device detectors are capable of searching large regions of the sky for these small dark moons. Currently Jupiter has 60 known satellites, of which 8 are regular and 52 irregular. This week Sheppard and Jewitt report the properties of the newly found irregular satellites and predict a final total of about 100 irregular satellites around Jupiter with diameters greater than 1 km. In a separate paper, Astakhov et al. present a new model explaining how gas giants like Jupiter may capture moons in such quantity, aided by a helping of chaos.
An abundant population of small irregular satellites
around Jupiter
SCOTT S. SHEPPARD & DAVID C.
JEWITT
Nature 423, 261–263 (2003); doi:10.1038/nature01584
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Chaos-assisted capture of irregular moons
SERGEY A. ASTAKHOV, ANDREW D. BURBANKS, STEPHEN WIGGINS &
DAVID FARRELLY
Nature 423, 264–267 (2003); doi:10.1038/nature01622
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Planetary science: Jupiter's moonopoly
DOUGLAS
P. HAMILTON
A further 23 satellites have been discovered in orbit around Jupiter.
With diameters of between two and eight kilometres, the moons are the smallest
yet spotted around any planet.
Nature 423, 235–236 (2003);
doi:10.1038/423235a
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