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A survey searching for objects in the Kuiper Belt has found two undiscovered moons of Jupiter. Jupiter now has 69 known moons:
Until recently the cataloged satellites totaled 67 in number. But only the innermost 15 of these orbit Jupiter in a prograde sense (in the direction of the planet's spin). The rest are retrograde, and are likely captured objects - other pieces of the solar system's solid inventory that strayed into Jupiter's gravitational grasp.
That population of outer moons is mostly small stuff, only a few are 20-60 kilometers in diameter, most are barely 1-2 kilometers in size, and increasingly difficult to spot. Now astronomers Scott Sheppard, David Tholen, and Chadwick Trujillo have added two more; bringing Jupiter's moon count to 69.
These additions are also about 1-2 km in size, and were spotted in images that were part of a survey for much more distant objects out in the Kuiper Belt. Jupiter just happened to be conveniently close in the sky at the time. The moons are S/2016 J1 and S/2017 J1, and are about 21 million km and 24 million km from Jupiter.
The moons are also known as Jupiter LIV and Jupiter LIX, and are members of the Pasiphae group. They are estimated to be about 3 and 2 km in diameter respectively.
Also at Popular Mechanics.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 15 2017, @01:24PM
Yup, as I told my wife when she asked me, "Why is Neptune a planet when Pluto crosses its orbit?"
"Well, the definition is that a planet has cleared the orbit of anything more than 2/3s its own size. So those two cross, but Neptune is huge while Pluto is small, so only Pluto loses out as it is no where near 2/3s of Neptune's size."