On the Hunt for Modern Moons

Mercury, March/April 2001 Table of Contents

Today’s moon wranglers are joining ranks to clean up the solar system. As a result, new satellite discoveries are rolling in at a record pace.

by William Schomaker

This story picks up where the previous story leaves off. In just the past few months, astronomers have discovered a mind-boggling 23 new moons, making this period by far the most prolific moon-hunting year in history. This article discusses the work done by the two teams that have found these moons. The teams are led by Brett Gladman of the Observatoire de la Cote d’Azur in France and Scott Sheppard of the University of Hawai’i. Gladman’s team has wracked up 12 Saturnian and 5 Uranian moons since 1997, while Sheppard’s team has bagged 11 Jovian moons in the last few months. How did they do it? Read the article and find out.

A sidebar to this article discusses the interesting case of Jupiter’s lost moon, which was first seen in 1975 but wasn’t seen again until Sheppard’s team recovered the moon in late 2000.

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