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The Irregular Moon Systems of the Giant Planets

Each of our giant planets has a regular and an irregular systemof moons.  Regular moons lie very close to the planet’s equatorialplane on nearly-circular direct orbits that share the planetaryrotational sense, and likely formed in the disk.  Irregular moons,in contrast, orbit at nearly all orbital inclinations (includingretrograde) and often have very eccentric orbits; these propertiesalone lead one to believe that the regular moons were born in anaccretion disk around each forming planet while the irregulars(or ancient precursors) were captured into orbit around the planet.I will review observational techniques by which we discover thesemoons, the current observational inventory and limits, what issuspected about the origin and evolution of the irregularmoon systems we see today, and future prospects for learning more.

AB 107, Codyhall, 50 St. George Street Toronto

Brett Gladman

September 28, 2022
3:00pm - 4:00pm