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A montage of Jupiter and its four largest moons (distance and sizes not to scale) There are 95 moons of Jupiter with confirmed orbits as of 5 February 2024. [1] [note 1] This number does not include a number of meter-sized moonlets thought to be shed from the inner moons, nor hundreds of possible kilometer-sized outer irregular moons that were only briefly captured by telescopes. [4]
Jupiter's moons were classified into four groups of four, based on their similar orbital elements. [204] This picture has been complicated by the discovery of numerous small outer moons since 1999. Jupiter's moons are divided into several different groups, although there are two known moons which are not part of any group (Themisto and Valetudo ...
The Galilean moons are named after Galileo Galilei, who observed them in either December 1609 or January 1610, and recognized them as satellites of Jupiter in March 1610; [2] they remained the only known moons of Jupiter until the discovery of the fifth largest moon of Jupiter Amalthea in 1892. [3]
Every human language has its own word for the Earth's Moon, and these words are the ones normally used in astronomical contexts.However, a number of fanciful or mythological names for the Moon have been used in the context of astronomy (an even larger number of lunar epithets have been used in non-astronomical contexts).
Jupiter has surpassed Saturn with the record for the planet with the most moons in our solar system. The gas giant has a total of 92 confirmed moons, according to new observations by astronomers.
The survey revealed 540 planetary-mass objects, with 40 binary systems and 2 triplets among them. Each component has a mass between 0.7 and 13 Jupiter masses (M J), placing them in the planetary-mass regime. The binary pairs have separations ranging from 28 to 384 astronomical units. This discovery was unexpected because the proportion of ...
Full moons, new moons and meteor showers are set to light up local skies in 2024 and are visible to the naked eye. ... Nov. 14 to Dec. 28 – Jupiter at its brightest. Nov. 15 – Full Beaver Moon ...
Two of the new moons orbit in the same direction as the planet rotates, which requires a name that ends in -a; the other three travel in the opposite direction and will be given names that end in ...