A Jovian moon lost and found.In September 1975, astronomer Charles T. Kowal He discovered two moons of Jupiter: Leda in 1974 and Themisto in 1975, although the latter was lost and not rediscovered until 2000. had his eye on Jupiter, trying to pinpoint the position of a Jovian satellite he had discovered the year before. Sky conditions were perfect, and when Kowal examined his photographs, he found what appeared to be yet another moon of the giant planet. A week later, another astronomer photographed the same object. That was the last time anyone spotted the body. On Nov. 21, 2000, however, David C. Jewitt David C. Jewitt is a Professor of astronomy at the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy. He was born in 1958 in England, and is a 1979 graduate of the University of London. Jewitt received an M.Sc. and a Ph. and his colleagues from the University of Hawaii (body, education) University of Hawaii - A University spread over 10 campuses on 4 islands throughout the state. http://hawaii.edu/uhinfo.html. See also Aloha, Aloha Net. in Honolulu found an intriguing object near Jupiter. Because of its slow motion relative to the stars and its location, the researchers suggested the object was a previously unseen moon. When Brian G. Marsden Brian G. Marsden (born August 5,1937) is a British astronomer, the longtime director of the Minor Planet Center(MPC). He specializes in celestial mechanics and astrometry, collecting data on the positions of asteroids and comets and computing their orbits, often from minimal of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics The Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) is located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It consists of the Harvard College Observatory and the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. The Center is located at 60 Garden Street. in Cambridge, Mass., examined the body's orbital data, he pegged it as the very object Kowal had found and lost 25 years earlier. "The missing Jupiter satellite is one of the classic stories of planetary astronomy," says Jewitt. "I had always assumed that the 1975 object had been some sort of misidentification." Jewitt's team, which announced the find in a Nov. 25 circular of the International Astronomical Union “IAU” redirects here. For other uses, see IAU (disambiguation). The International Astronomical Union (IAU) unites national astronomical societies from around the world. , estimates that the moon has a diameter of only 16 kilometers and an orbit that's large, elliptical, and inclined relative to Jupiter's equator. Nine other Jovian moons have similar characteristics. "I was amazed and delighted at the recovery of this satellite," says Kowal, now, at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md. "I had come to believe it was a passing comet." In a Jan. 5 IAU circular, Jewitt's team reports finding 10 previously unknown Jovian moons, bringing the total to 28. |
|
||||||||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion