PARIS, March 10: Jupiter, the largest planet in the Solar System, now has 52 moons, thanks to a flurry of 12 satellites discovered by astronomers last month.

The team discovered seven new satellites in early February and a few days later uncovered another five, according to a report on the website of the University of Hawaii.

The findings have been ratified by the International Astronomical Union (IAU), the Paris-based agency that vets claims by astronomers, it said.

The discoverers were Scott Sheppard and David Jewitt of the university’s Institute for Astronomy and Jan Kleyna of Britain’s Cambridge University. They used the world’s two largest digital cameras, located on telescopes atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii.

Jupiter’s closest rivals for moons is Saturn, with 30 detected so far, followed by Uranus, with 21, and Neptune, 11.

The news website space.com said that the batch includes “two rocks” estimated to be just one kilometre in diameter — the first Jovian satellites to be less than two kilometres across.

Jewitt estimates that Jupiter might have 100 satellites down to the one-kilometre range, it said.—AFP