Astronomers have discovered 12 new moons around Jupiter, bringing the total count to a record 92.
That’s more than any other planet in our solar system. Saturn, the one-time leader, comes in second with 83 confirmed moons.
Jupiter’s moons were recently added to a list maintained by the International Astronomical Union’s Center for Minor Planets, said Scott Sheppard of the Carnegie Institution, who was part of the team.
They were discovered using telescopes in Hawaii and Chile in 2021 and 2022, and their orbits were confirmed with follow-up observations.
These newer moons range in size from 0.6 miles to 2 miles (1 kilometer to 3 kilometers), according to Sheppard.
“I hope we can get a close-up image of one of these outer moons in the near future to better determine its origins,” he said in an email on Friday.
In April, the European Space Agency will send a spacecraft to Jupiter to study the planet and some of its largest icy moons. And next year, NASA will launch the Europa Clipper to explore Jupiter’s namesake moon, which could harbor an ocean beneath its frozen crust.
Sheppard, who discovered a large number of moons around Saturn a few years ago and has been involved in 70 discoveries of moons around Jupiter so far, hopes to add to the lunar tally of both gas giants.
Jupiter and Saturn are laden with small moons, thought to be fragments of once larger moons that collided with each other or with comets or asteroids, Sheppard said. The same is true of Uranus and Neptune, but they are so far apart that they make detecting the moon even more difficult.
For the record, Uranus has 27 confirmed moons, Neptune 14, Mars two, and Earth one. Venus and Mercury come out empty.
Jupiter’s newly discovered moons have yet to be named. Sheppard said only half of them are big enough, at least 1 mile (1.5 kilometers) or so, to warrant a name.
