WASHINGTON (CNN) —
Jupiter already reigns as king of the planets — it’s the largest one in our solar system. And now, the gas giant has the most known moons, too.
Astronomers have observed 12 additional moons orbiting Jupiter, bringing its total number of confirmed moons to 92.
The discovery was made during observations by astronomer Scott Sheppard of the Carnegie Institution for Science and his team. They used the Subaru Telescope in Hawaii in September 2021 and the Dark Energy Camera located on the Blanco telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile in August 2022. The Dark Energy Camera can survey the sky for faint objects.
Jupiter and its natural satellites were in alignment with more distant targets that Sheppard and his team have been seeking in the Kuiper Belt, a ring of icy objects circling the sun that’s located past the orbit of Neptune on the edge of the solar system.
“We have been surveying for new moons around Jupiter serendipitously while our main survey is looking for planets in the outer solar system beyond Pluto,” Sheppard said.
The team could tell the difference between Jupiter and the objects around it versus the distant solar system objects because any objects around Jupiter would be moving at the same rate as the gas giant. Distant solar system objects can’t move as quickly as objects moving with Jupiter.
Follow-up observations for the 12 new moons took about a year to confirm, and the team used the Magellan Telescope in Chile to conduct that work.
None of the moons have names yet since their discovery was just announced, but the Minor Planet Center will assign each one a number in the coming months.
The Minor Planet Center tracks the positions of minor planets, comets and space rocks. Under the auspices of the International Astronomical Union, the organization is responsible for the identification, designation and orbital data for such celestial objects.
“The International Astronomical Union allows the naming of any moon larger than about 1.5 miles (2.4 kilometers) in size, of which half of these new discoveries are larger than that, so they will get names,” Sheppard said.