A work in progress: Most recent update April 4, 2003
This page describes the discovery of 18 new satellites of Jupiter,
bringing the total of known Jupiter satellites to 58.
Discovery of the New Satellites
The majority of the new satellites were discovered in early
February 2003 by Scott S. Sheppard and David C. Jewitt from the
Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawaii along with Jan Kleyna
of Cambridge University. The discoveries were made using the world’s
two largest digital cameras at the Subaru (8.3 meter diameter) and
Canada-France-Hawaii (3.6 meter diameter) telescopes atop Mauna Kea
in Hawaii. Both telescopes and their imaging cameras represent the
latest technology has to offer. Recoveries were performed at the
University of Hawaii 2.2 meter with help from Yanga Fernandez and
Henry Hsieh also from the University of Hawaii. Brian Marsden of the
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics performed the orbit
fitting for the new satellites.
The first 7 satellites were formally announced by the International
Astronomical Union on Circular No. 8087 on March 4, 2003 while the
eighth was announced on Circular No. 8088 on March 6, the 9th through
12th on Circular No. 8089 on March 7, and S/2003 J13 through J18 were
announced in early April. All the satellites appear to have distant
retrograde orbits (ie. their orbital rotation is opposite to Jupiter’s
rotation) like the majority of the known irregular satellites of Jupiter.
However these orbits are still preliminary and may change as new
observations are obtained.
