[Stormymystic]

Two astronomers from Hawaii have found 23 new moons orbiting Jupiter, bringing the number of moons circling the planet to a whopping 60. The nearly two dozen new moons are tiny--just 2 kilometers to 5 kilometers across--making them the smallest moons ever to be detected from Earth, reports Canada's CBC News. Of the 60 moons, only eight are considered "regular" satellites that formed from Jupiter. The other 52 "irregulars" were likely sucked into Jupiter's orbit billions of years ago--and never escaped, which offers a unique view into what happened in the early solar system.
Jupiter has, by far, the most moons of any other planet. The closest competitor is Saturn with 31. The discoverers are Scott Sheppard and David Jewitt of the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Hawaii, who have turned finding new jovian moons into a regular hobby, having found 43 of the 60. They don't think their work is finished, either. The AFP news service notes that the discovery is technically significant, because it shows how high-powered telescopes combined with modern computers can capture tiny objects in irregular orbits

Here's a fun tidbit: Each of Jupiter's moons must be named by the International Astronomical Union (IAU). Since "Jupiter" is the Latin word for Zeus, the ruler of the Olympian gods, the planet's moons have all been named after Zeus's lovers. Fortunately for the IAU, Zeus had a long list of lovers. But even this is too much for Zeus's little black book. So the IAU has resorted to naming the new jovian moons after children or relatives of the lovers