{"id":3235,"date":"2018-07-28T10:23:14","date_gmt":"2018-07-28T17:23:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nau.edu\/astronomy-and-planetary-science\/?p=3235"},"modified":"2019-11-04T10:24:16","modified_gmt":"2019-11-04T17:24:16","slug":"view-from-mars-hill-searching-for-jupiters-moons-local-azdailysun-com","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/department-astronomy-planetary-science\/view-from-mars-hill-searching-for-jupiters-moons-local-azdailysun-com\/","title":{"rendered":"View from Mars Hill: Searching for Jupiter’s moons | Local | azdailysun.com"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Four score and eight years ago, Clyde Tombaugh brought forth on this continent a new planet (apologies to Abraham Lincoln on many counts, including being off by one year). The planet\u2019s name was Pluto and its discovery culminated the search begun by Percival Lowell for Planet X \u2014 a theoretical new member of our solar system. Last week, a team of astronomers including NAU\u2019s Chad Trujillo announced their own startling discovery while carrying out a modern Planet X search. They didn\u2019t find a planet (yet!) but a dozen previously undetected moons around Jupiter.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The story of this discovery dates back to 2014 when the team, led by Scott Sheppard of the Carnegie Institution for Science, discovered a small body in the outer reaches of the solar system. Called 2012 VP113, its orbit is not only the most distant-known of any object in the solar system, but is also similar to several other outer-solar-system bodies. This led Sheppard and his team to suggest that a large, previously undetected planet was lurking somewhere out there, shepherding (or should we say Shepparding?) those bodies toward similar orbits.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The team thus began searching for this apparent perturbing body they called \u201cPlanet X,\u201d much as Lowell began his Planet X search in 1905, looking for an object that seemed to be perturbing the planet Uranus.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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In 2017, Jupiter happened to be located in the same area of sky where the team was searching for the planet. Team members decided to take advantage of this proximity and see if they might detect any new Jovian satellites. Trujillo, an assistant professor in NAU\u2019s Department of Physics and Astronomy, says, “The search for the Jupiter moons was spearheaded by Scott Sheppard and Carnegie, and was a great way to use some of our telescope time during a time of night when our prime Planet X survey fields weren’t available.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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This side-attraction search proved successful. Based on observations made at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, the team uncovered a dozen new moons. For Trujillo\u2019s part, he measured their positions and examined follow-up images of several of the moons, efforts necessary to confirm their identity. Some of this imaging was done with Lowell Observatory\u2019s Discovery Channel Telescope (DCT), under the guidance of Lowell\u2019s Audrey Thirouin and Nick Moskovitz. Trujillo says, \u201cOur partnership with Lowell on the DCT is important and access to it allows us to follow new discoveries quickly, which is important for things like these new Jupiter moons whose orbits are initially very uncertain.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Source: View from Mars Hill: Searching for Jupiter’s moons | Local | azdailysun.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Four score and eight years ago, Clyde Tombaugh brought forth on this continent a new planet (apologies to Abraham Lincoln on many counts, including being off by one year). The planet\u2019s name was Pluto and its discovery culminated the search begun by Percival Lowell for Planet X \u2014 a theoretical new member of our solar […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,187],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-astronomy","category-astronomy-and-planetary-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/department-astronomy-planetary-science\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/department-astronomy-planetary-science\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/department-astronomy-planetary-science\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/department-astronomy-planetary-science\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/84"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/department-astronomy-planetary-science\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3235"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/department-astronomy-planetary-science\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3235\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3236,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/department-astronomy-planetary-science\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3235\/revisions\/3236"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/department-astronomy-planetary-science\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/department-astronomy-planetary-science\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/department-astronomy-planetary-science\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}