Pingie: HTTP:: Jupiter Made Comet an Artificial Moon for 12 Years

HTTP:: Jupiter Made Comet an Artificial Moon for 12 Years
--------
Between 1949 and 1961, the comet 147P/Kushida-Muramatsu was considered to be a moon of Jupiter. The large gas giant captured the celestial body in an irregular orbit around it, and its influence only became dim enough to let the comet escape after about 12 years of “captivity.” Dr. David Asher will present the find today, September 14th, at the European Planetary Science Congress, in Potsdam, Germany, AlphaGalileo reports. “Fortunately for us Jupiter, as the most massive planet with the greatest gravity, sucks objects towards it more readily than other planets and we expect to observe large impacts there more often than on Earth. Comet Kushida-Muramatsu has escaped from the giant planet and will avoid the fate of Shoemaker-Levy 9 for the foreseeable future,” Asher said before the conference. “Our work has become very topical again with the discovery this July of an expanding debris plume, created by the dust from the colliding object, which is the evident sign!
ature of an impact. The results of our study suggest that impacts on Jupiter and temporary satellite capture events may happen more frequently than we previously expected,” he added. An international team of experts, led by Dr. Katsuhito Ohtsuka, conducted a series of scientific measurements o...
--------
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Jupiter-Made-Comet-an-Artificial-Moon-for-12-Years-121564.shtml
--------
This e-mail was sent by Experiment23 Inc., located in New York, NY
10163. To not receive further e-mails, please visit
http://help.pingie.com