Jupiter Overtakes Saturn as The Planet With The Most Known Moons - ScienceAlert

The orbits of the moons, which are unnamed, have been published in the circulars of the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center, which keeps records of all the small bodies discovered in the Solar System.

The observations were led by astronomer Scott Sheppard of Carnegie Institution for Science, who has spearheaded the discoveries after accidentally discovering a plethora of previously unknown Jovian moons during a hunt for the mysterious hypothetical Planet Nine in the outer Solar System.

"Jupiter just happened to be in the sky near the search fields where we were looking for extremely distant Solar System objects," Sheppard said in 2018, after his team discovered a dozen new moons.

When looking for evidence of Planet Nine, however, the researchers used a more powerful telescope than ever before, zooming in at higher resolutions, across a wider field of view than other observations in the past.

Anything near Jupiter moving across the sky in the same direction and at the same speed is a potential moon, but confirming them takes time.

For example, the retrograde moons are thought to be the remnants of three larger bodies that were captured in Jovian orbit and then broke apart after colliding with other objects.