An amateur astronomer spotted a new moon orbiting Jupiter

Jupiter and some of its moons.
(Image credit: Courtesy of NASA/Newsmakers)

From millions and millions of miles away, amateur astronomer Kai Ly made a big discovery.

In June, Ly began looking closely at telescope images of Jupiter taken by the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope in 2003. Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system, with 79 acknowledged moons, and Ly was curious to find any new ones. While studying images from the night of Feb. 24, Ly spotted three possible moons. Moving on to images captured a few days later, Ly couldn't see two of those potential moons, but did see the third, Sky and Telescope reports.

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Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia is night editor for TheWeek.com. Her writing and reporting has appeared in Entertainment Weekly and EW.com, The New York Times, The Book of Jezebel, and other publications. A Southern California native, Catherine is a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.