Abstract
THE ORIGIN OF THE RECENTLY DISCOVERED JOVIAN SATELLITES.—Criticising Prof. Forbes's recent suggestion (NATURE, p. 30, No. 2011, May 14) that the newly discovered eighth satellite of Jupiter may in reality be the long-lost Lexell's comet of 1770, captured by the giant planet in 1779, Prof. Tarrida del Marmol conjectures that a more likely explanation of the origin of the sixth, o seventh, and eighth satellites is to be found in the suggestion that they are asteroids which revolved at the same distance from the sun as Jupiter, and were captured by the latter. He shows that if the asteroid be either further away from, or nearer to, the sun, the annexation cannot take place, but when the distances are equal the asteroid will, with its relatively negligible mass, be effectively the inferior planet, and will suffer capture. The recent discovery of the four Jovian asteroids Achilles, Patroclus, Hector, and 1908 C.S., strengthens the possibility of this conjecture. Prof, del Marmol concludes his note, which appears in the August number of Knowledge and Illustrated Scientific News (vol. v., No. 8, p. 185), with the tentative suggestion that the Saturnian satellites Hyperion, Themis, and Phœbe may have been captured by Saturn in the same manner.
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Our Astronomical Column . Nature 78, 401–402 (1908). https://doi.org/10.1038/078401a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/078401a0