Jupiter Snared Moon for 12 Years http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/09/14/jupiter-moon.html
Sept. 14, 2009 -- Jupiter snared a passing comet in the middle of the last century, eventually releasing it 12 years later, astronomers reported on Monday. Data presented at the European Planetary Science Congress in Potsdam, near Berlin, showed that the biggest planet of the Solar System gained a temporary satellite, a comet called 147P/Kushida-Muramatsu, between 1949 and 1961. It is only the fifth captured comet to be identified, a press release said. Comets are lonely wanderers of the solar system, sometimes taking decades or even centuries to complete a long orbit around the sun. On rare occasions, though, these enigmatic bodies of ice and dust can wander into the vicinity of a planet, where they are netted by its gravitational pull. Sometimes, the comet breaks up and smashes into the planet, as was famously the case with Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, whose fragments smashed into Jupiter in 1994. Most of the observed temporary captures have been flybys, in which a comet does not complete a full orbit before wresting itself free. *********************************** * POST TO MEDIANEWS@ETSKYWARN.NET * *********************************** Medianews mailing list Medianews@etskywarn.net http://lists.etskywarn.net/mailman/listinfo/medianews
