12 New Moons Discovered by Astronomers Orbiting Jupiter in Collision Course

One of a dozen new moons have been discovered orbiting Jupiter – 9 “normal” outer ones and an “oddball” – scientists from the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington reported on Tuesday.
Jupiter now has 79 known moons including the previously unknown moons orbiting the giant planet, more than any other planet in our Solar System. Saturn has the second highest number of known moons: 61.
The team first glimpsed the moons in March last year from the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, but needed more than a year to confirm that the bodies were locked in orbit around the gas giant. “It was a long process,” said Scott Sheppard, who led the effort at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington DC.
“Jupiter just happened to be in the sky near the search fields where we were looking for extremely distant Solar System objects, so we were serendipitously able to look for new moons around Jupiter while at the same time looking for planets at the fringes of our Solar System,” said Sheppard in a statement released by Carnegie.
Sheppard’s report which appears in the International Astronomical Union Minor Planet Electronic Circular, suspects that Valetudo is the final remnant of a once much larger moon that has been crushed by collisions in the past.
It raises the question of how long the tiny moon has left. “Collisions don’t happen all that frequently, every billion years or so,” said Sheppard. “If one did happen, we would be able to detect it from Earth, but it is unlikely to happen anytime soon.”
> Shiuly Rina