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Who is the planet with the most moons in the solar system? This is a long-standing issue. The International Astronomical Union (IAU) asteroid Center recently announced that Jupiter has discovered 12 new moons, with a total of 92 known moons, surpassing Saturn's 83, becoming the planet with the largest number of known moons in the solar system and crowning the "king of moons" of the solar system-though probably only temporarily.

With astronomers discovering new moons in the solar system, Jupiter and Saturn have been chasing each other for the throne of "king of moons". From 2002 to 2018, Jupiter had more known moons than Saturn. Saturn overtook it in 2019 (82 more than 79), but today, four years later, Jupiter has regained its own throne.

Orbital diagrams of some of Jupiter's moons (disproportionate distances) | Carnegie Inst. For Science Jupiter's moons were discovered by astronomers through telescopes in Chile and Hawaii in 2021 and 2022, but it will take months to determine whether they are moons rather than meteorites and other objects, so it was not until recently that the asteroid center officially added them to Jupiter's planet list.

The very large Telescope (Very Large Telescope) in Chile | Wiki the newly discovered moons of Jupiter are very small, ranging from 1 km to 3 km in diameter, and only half of their members can be named according to the satellite's naming rules (more than 1 mile in diameter). And they are so far away from Jupiter that it takes at least 340 days to orbit Jupiter, and even the farthest moon takes more than 550 days. With its small size and long distance, it is not difficult to understand why these satellites have not been discovered until recently.

The difficulty of finding a satellite is not just the size of the moon and its distance from the planet. Moons are gravitated by both the planets and the sun, so their trajectories are more complex than asteroids and comets, and it takes longer to analyze their orbits. For asteroids and comets, a few weeks of observation may be enough to predict their flight path, while moons can take months or even years.

Jupiter 43, discovered in 2002, is just a dot in the image. Besides being the planet with the largest number of known moons, Wiki belongs to Jupiter as well as the moon. In 1610, Galileo used his homemade telescope to discover that there were four moons around Jupiter (Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto), which were later named Galileo. Ganymede is also the largest moon in the solar system, with a diameter of more than 5200 kilometers and is even larger than Mercury, a planet.

Galileo NASA, Jupiter's four largest moons. However, in the more than 300 years since Galileo's discovery, astronomers have found only a few sporadic moons due to the level of observation. It was not until the 1970s, when spaceships such as Voyager 1 began to enter space, that the number of satellites discovered began to grow rapidly. After entering the 21st century, thanks to the improvement of the sensitivity of electronic equipment, astronomers began to use large ground optical telescopes on Earth to find moons. at present, the total number of satellites found in the solar system has reached 224.

Voyager 1 has discovered many moons | Wiki despite the fact that Jupiter and Saturn have dozens of moons, moons are a luxury for many family members of the solar system: Mercury and Venus have no moons, Earth has only one (that is, the moon), and Mars has only two. Uranus and Neptune are slightly more, 27 and 14, respectively. The question of the number of planets' moons is very complex, and there is no clear answer to why there are so many small planets around Jupiter and Saturn, which may be related to many factors, such as their own mass and distance from the sun.

Moons of some planets in the solar system | Wiki in other words, Jupiter, who has regained the throne of the "king of moons", should not be happy too soon. There is evidence that there are a large number of small celestial bodies around Saturn, and if subsequent satellite observations of Saturn can be expanded to objects about 3 kilometers in diameter, then the number of Saturn's moons is expected to exceed 100. It may even exceed the number of moons of other planets in the solar system combined.

Saturn is on the verge of regaining the title of king of moons from Jupiter at any time. NASA Jupiter also has good news-it will soon be visited by space probes. In April, the European Space Agency (ESA) will launch Jupiter's Ice Satellite probe (JUICE) to explore Jupiter's Europa, Ganymede and Callisto to see if they have potential livable conditions, while delving into Jupiter's complex environment. Next October, NASA will launch the Europa Clipper (Europa Clipper) to explore Europa, and there is evidence of an ocean of liquid water beneath its surface. The arrival of the space probe is likely to bring more information about Jupiter's moons.

JUICE is about to visit Jupiter and its four largest moons. NASA believes that the Moon King will still change hands back and forth between Jupiter and Saturn for a long time to come.

Reference:

[1] https://phys.org/news/2023-02-jupiter-moon-solar.html

[2] https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/astronomers-find-a-dozen-more-moons-for-jupiter/

[3] https://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2019/1008/New-moon-king-Saturn-passes-Jupiter-with-20-moon-discovery

[4] https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/moons/overview/

[5] https://www.nssdc.ac.cn/mhsy/html/videodec.html?8fc78c8b-3c29-490b-b64e-65cf7011c14c

[6] https://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/

[7] https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Juice

[8] https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/europa-clipper

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