Science Porn

[Anomalocaris]

FWIW, Don't have any proof, but statistically speaking, it would be profoundly unlikely for any of the outermost retinue of Jupiter's (or Saturn's for that manner) to not contain any binary objects or to have their own moons.

Seriously.  We've found asteroids scooting by earth with moons, the outer most flock of Jupiter's satellites are captured asteroids, there's gotta be some moons of moons there, even if we haven't detected any yet.

Captured asteroids are likely tO have first been captured into highly elliptical orbits, which would subject them to highly varied gravitational interactions with Jupiter and its existing moons. Given typical asteriod’s very surface gravity and very low orbital velocity of any moon of its own that previously orbited it prior to the capture, it seems to me there is high chance any objects orbiting a captured asteroid would be striped from the gravity influence of the asteroid during orbital evolution of the asteroid around Jupiter.

[vorlon13]

The very outermost 'flock' of Jupiter's satellites are likely not ever to have been close to Jupiter itself. The 'outies' are just barely held in orbit by distant Jupiter and likely drift off from time to time (due to influence from Saturn etc.) and others might 'drift' in and replace them.

Jupiter has quite a retinue of L4 and L5 Trojans and I'm thinking there's been some overlap amongst the outies and the Trojans. A given object in any of the 3 categories could not make a close approach to Jupiter itself without being 'expelled' from those 3 categories.

Jupiter is a bully.

[vorlon13]

Looks like MU69 is getting a nomenclature upgrade; it's being referred to as Ultimate Thule now. A billion miles outbound from Pluto, it will be the most distant and primitive object ever explored.

Flyby still on track for New Horizons 1/1/19.

BTW, despite great cameras, MU69 is still invisible to New Horizons. The flyby is being planned and organized so far with images from the Hubble Space Telescope. They expect the new Horizons cameras to start registering MU69 around this September.

[Fake Messiah]

[SteelCurtain]

Badass fish

[Fireball]

For the fish, I say "turn about is fair play"!

[Silver]