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The First Amateur Astronomer to Ever Discover a New Moon – And it’s Orbiting Jupiter

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Jupiter and its largest moon Ganymede (NASA, ESA and E. Karkoschka (University of Arizona))

One might think that since we can take detailed images of galaxies millions of light years away, there is no way that something as significant as a moon could exist within our solar system without our knowledge, but there are not only moons that have not yet we know, but they are being found by amateur astronomers.

In the equivalent of putting the star 80 on a Jupiter flag, hobbyist Kai Ly officially presented evidence for a Jupiter moon 80, a hitherto not located red rock celestial body.

Currently awaiting a common name, the moon is believed to be a chunk of a very large comet absorbed by Jupiter’s gigantic gravitational field, rather than a fragment of the planet itself.

This is not the only moon, believe it or not, that Ly has discovered. In fact, using data from a detailed study of Jupiter in 2003 from the Canada-France-Hawai’i Observatory, Ly I found four moons last year and analyzed the fifth from the same data as a “summer pastime before … school.”

“I am proud to say that this is the first planetary moon discovered by an amateur astronomer,” Ly wrote in a message to the astronomical community. “Other than that, there really is nothing extraordinary about this Jovian moon, it is just a typical member of the Carme retrograde group.”

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Discovered in 1938, the Carme group it is a group of “Jovian moons” (moons of Jupiter) that come from a single large comet or other type of debris. The largest moon in the group, which carries 99% of its total mass, is called Carme, but it is only 14 miles in diameter. The following clip demonstrates the “miniscularity” of the new moon.

Images of EJc0061

The Carme group stands out for its spectacular elliptical orbit, but also because they orbit in the opposite direction to the planet itself, known as retrograde. While the recently discovered “EJc0061 = S / 2003 J 24” is the last of the known Jovian moons to be found, there could be more, even hundreds of which have not yet been discovered.

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The Jovian moons are fascinating objects, including entities like Io, which is the most volcanically active body in the solar system, while Ganymede, the largest of the Jovian moons, is the only moon in our solar system with a magnetic field, giving it an aurora. by the way.

The best periods to look at are when the Earth and Jupiter are skewered by the sun, allowing us to see it in full light.

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