Mercury,
March/April 2001 Table of Contents
Todays
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 dAzur in France and Scott Sheppard
of the University of Hawaii. Gladmans team has wracked
up 12 Saturnian and 5 Uranian moons since 1997, while Sheppards
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 Jupiters
lost moon, which was first seen in 1975 but wasnt seen again
until Sheppards team recovered the moon in late 2000.
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