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Space Science

43 More Moons Discovered Orbiting Jupiter 41

Posted by michael from the space-junk dept.
linuxwrangler writes "Scott S. Sheppard, a graduate student at the University of Hawaii, has discovered 43 more moons orbiting Jupiter more than doubling the number of known Jovian moons. The small moons, which follow wildly irregular orbits, are thought to be the result of ancient collisions of larger moons. Sheppard used a 2.2 and a 3.6 meter telescope at the Mauna Kea observatory to catalog the moons."
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43 More Moons Discovered Orbiting Jupiter More

43 More Moons Discovered Orbiting Jupiter

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  • Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday May 16, 2003 @12:42PM (#5974166)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • How convenient! (Score:3, Funny)

    by cbiffle ( 211614 ) on Friday May 16, 2003 @12:48PM (#5974209)
    Now we can call them, what, Sheppard moons [southpole.com]? But Jupiter's ring is so insignificant!

    Ahhhh, astronomy puns.

  • Definitely a rising star... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by 0x69 ( 580798 ) on Friday May 16, 2003 @12:50PM (#5974229) Journal
    A young grad student is getting time on some of professional astronomy's top-tier toys, then publishing his results in Nature? Very interesting indeed...

    Even if it's a fix, this guy seems a shoe-in to get (*extremely* scarce) good job offers in astronomy.
    • I hope he's good on TV, and has a penchant for writing to the masses. A strange pronounciation of a common word would help too.

      We need someone to fill the shoes of Carl Sagan
      • "We need someone to fill the shoes of Carl Sagan"

        If he can also write a novel that can get adapted into a bad Jodie Foster movie about a giant toy gyroscope, he's got the job.

    • Re:Definitely a rising star... (Score:5, Informative)

      by CanSpice ( 300894 ) on Friday May 16, 2003 @01:55PM (#5974789) Homepage
      Actually, grad students at the University of Hawaii are privileged in that UH gets telescope time on every telescope on the mountain for free, either 10 or 15% of all allocated time. This puts UH staff and students in an enviable position where they do not have to go through stricter reviews in order to get telescope time on some of the best telescopes in the world.

      Some (if not most) of the telescopes on Mauna Kea are oversubscribed, which means that for every night of available observing time they have more than one night of applications. More clearly stated, when applications roll in the total number of nights applied for might be, say, 150 nights in a six-month period when there might only be 100 nights available.

      That's for regular applicants. Remember that UH gets 10 to 15% of the time straight off the top. There are some telescopes on Mauna Kea where the UH observers don't know what to do with their time!

      And for what it's worth, there aren't that many jobs available for moon hunters. It's an extremely small field and, in my opinion, an extremely uninteresting one from any kind of theoretical point of view. All you do is get a big telescope with a wide field camera, point it just off the side of Jupiter, take a bunch of pictures, and see if anything moved. There's little innovation or new ideas involved, which is why something like this was left to a grad student.

      And it's not like you need to have a PhD to get published. As an undergrad student I was published twice and had posters involving my work presented at two or three conferences. And some of that work was using possibly the most famous telescope of all -- the Hubble Space Telescope.

      Not to degrade Mr. Sheppard's discovery, but it's not that big a deal, really.

      • Re:Definitely a rising star... (Score:4, Funny)

        by t0qer ( 230538 ) on Saturday May 17, 2003 @09:30PM (#5983538) Homepage Journal
        Not to degrade Mr. Sheppard's discovery, but it's not that big a deal, really.

        Got to disagree with you there...

        What this guy did was add to a map of the solar system. Finding these moons means we don't have to worry about crashing billion dollar probes into them because "I didn't know it was there"

        Your comment sounds more like jealousy than critique.
        As an undergrad student I was published twice and had posters involving my work presented at two or three conferences.

        Yeah but I bet you never had your work published and slashdotted!
    • I don't think the big profs count the 2.2 and 3.6 meter telescopes as a top tier toy. As an undergrad at Arizona I had regular access to a 2.3 meter and a 2.4 meter telescope on Kitt Peak [noao.edu] immediately after my freshman year. Part of this was due to having a nice advisor and some of it was because everyone else was trying to use bigger telescopes like the MMT [mmto.org] and Magellan [ociw.edu].

      Seeing as this guy is at Hawaii I'm betting the fights over the 2 to 3 meter class telescopes is no where near the fights people w

  • Ohh.. (Score:2, Informative)

    by IpsissimusMarr ( 672940 ) *
    No wonder people complain about science textbooks are so out of date

    ...
    Even the scientists aren't sure.
    • No wonder people complain about science textbooks are so out of date

      The books should do something like this:

      Moon Counts:

      Mercury: 0
      Venus: 0
      Earth: 1
      Mars: 2
      Jupiter: lots and lots

      ....

  • eBay? (Score:5, Funny)

    by AtariAmarok ( 451306 ) on Friday May 16, 2003 @12:55PM (#5974270)
    Can I get one on eBay?

  • going to be called "Sheppard's Shepherd Moons"? Or "Shep[pa|he]rd moons?

    [Shepherd moons are what keep the rings in line and are responsible for the many gaps in the rings].

  • What next? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Luigi30 ( 656867 )
    They'll discover that Earth is a moon of Jupiter, and that the universe revolves around Jupiter? Hey didn't we go over this about 250 years ago?

  • double-take (Score:4, Funny)

    by Sherloqq ( 577391 ) on Friday May 16, 2003 @03:58PM (#5975715)
    *sigh* I had to re-read the title, cause at first glance the conversation didn't match the topic...

    • 43 Morons Discovered Orbiting Jupiter


    oh...
  • The small moons, which follow wildly irregular orbits, are thought to be the result of ancient collisions of larger moons

    So, if there are still 80 largish pieces of rock whizzing about up there what are the chances of another collision?

  • How big are these 'moons'? I'm just gonna nitpick and point out that every gas giant in our system has rings, just not all as spectacular as Saturn's. Google:jovian rings [google.com]

  • 43? (Score:1)

    by pokka ( 557695 )

    Are they sure it's 43? It would be much more interesting if they found 42 new moons instead.
  • when the monolith turns Jupiter into a secondary sun. Only the outer, bigger better known ones will survive. Of course we wont be able to land on Europa.


    "All these worlds are yours, except Europa... [planetarymysteries.com]
    ATTEMPT NO LANDINGS THERE."

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