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Article: Many moons: which planet has the most?
- Article from:
- Highlights for Children
- Article date:
- July 1, 2004
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2004 Highlights for Children, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Which planet of our solar system has the most moons? Jupiter is the current leader, now that a big survey has been completed. You can see in the table below a moon scorecard for the giant planets, which have more moons than any of the smaller planets closer to Earth.
Surveying Jupiter for all its moons was a giant problem. Two astronomers worked for about four years to cover a space millions of times greater than that of Jupiter itself.
Telescopes were specially designed for the job. Instead of an eyepiece, each had a small disc holding many closely spaced light-sensitive dots, with each dot wired separately to a computer. That arrangement was just right ...