Discover 10 more microscopic satellites orbiting Jupiter

The discovery of 10 more satellites flying around Jupiter brings the total number of natural satellites to 79, including one in the opposite direction.

On July 17, the team of astronomer Scott Sheppard of the Carnegie Institute of Science in Washington, USA, announced that 10 new objects have been identified around Jupiter.

All newly discovered objects are quite small, only 1-4km in size. Meanwhile, Jupiter has a diameter of 142,984km and owns many large satellites like Ganymede, with a diameter of 5,268km.

Image of Jupiter taken from NASA's Juno spacecraft on May 23.(Photo: Reuters).

Sheppard said objects could have formed near Jupiter in the early stages of the Solar System and attracted by the planet's strong gravity.

"Jupiter is like a big vacuum cleaner because of its massive size ," Sheppard explained. 'These objects fly around it instead of falling, so we think they are a form of existence that lies between meteorite and meteorite, that is, half-ice, half-stone'.

Among the new satellites, the most interesting object is named Valetudo after the name of the health goddess, the granddaughter of Roman god Jupiter. Valetudo flies in the same direction as the parent planet but other satellites fly in the opposite direction.

'Valetudo is "going wrong lane" on the highway, so it will likely collide with other objects. It may have collided with them before , 'Sheppard said.

Jupiter, with 79 satellites, is the planet with the largest number of natural satellites in the Solar System, followed by Saturn with 62 objects flying around. According to Sheppard, Jupiter and Saturn may have similar numbers of satellites, only scientists have yet to identify small objects around Saturn.

Satellite or moon of a planet is an object that orbits another planet other than the sun, regardless of size. Only two planets near the Sun are Mercury and Venus does not have any natural satellites. Twenty-six of the 79 objects around Jupiter are not yet named, including nine of the 10 newly discovered satellites.