Why Jupiter's Tally of Moons Keeps Going Up and Up

Scientists have spotted 12 more moons around Jupiter, adding to an already-huge number that just seems to grow and grow. From a report: There's so many moons around this gas giant planet that astronomer Scott Sheppard struggles to keep track. "With this new haul, we're up to, I believe, 92 ... actually, I have to check that," he says, leaning over to type into his computer at the Carnegie Institution for Science, Earth and Planets Laboratory in Washington, DC. " Yeah, so 92 is the number that we have right now." His team is currently tracking some more moons that, once confirmed over the next year or two, should put Jupiter over 100. There's good reason to keep looking for more moons, Sheppard says: If one was found in a convenient orbit, a spacecraft on a mission to Jupiter could fly close by and take a peek, letting scientists figure out what the moonlet is made of. That's important because Jupiter's small, outer moons are fairly mysterious. Astronomers suspect that they are remnants of the original building material that got used to form the solar system's biggest planet. Sheppard has been discovering new moons around Jupiter for over two decades, leading some colleagues to jokingly call him "Galileo," after the famous astronomer who first discovered that Jupiter had moons in 1610. Every few years, Sheppard and his fellow astronomers take advantage of better technology and bigger telescopes to add more moons to the tally. At the moment, Jupiter holds the record for the most known moons, beating out Saturn, which has 83.

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