With the advent of these 12 previously undiscovered moons, the gas giant now has 92 known orbiting entities, surpassing Saturn’s amazing collection of 83.
Although scientists face a significant challenge in locating these tiny celestial entities, both planets are really expected to be joined by many more moons. The intense glare emitted by Jupiter further complicates things, and any that are tiny enough to have escaped discovery up to now may probably only be spotted with highly powerful telescopes that don’t have a broad enough field of vision to take in the whole Jovian system.
Dr. Scott Sheppard has spent the last several years following the orbits of the 12 new moons, which have recently been published by the Minor Planet Center, unfazed by these challenges (MPC). Sheppard also made a prior discovery of Jovian moons, which was released back in 2018.
Nine of the twelve new satellites are found in the far-off moon clusters that orbit Jupiter retrogradely, or in the opposite direction of the inner moons. These tiny backtracking objects all take at least 550 days to complete one orbit despite their small size.