In a curveball of cosmic proportions, astronomers went looking for a hypothetical planet on the far fringes of our solar system, and instead found 12 new moons dancing around Jupiter.

To be clear, these moons are no Ganymede, the largest moon in the solar system. They’re tiny, some barely a mile across, and they are tracing all kinds of weird paths around the giant world.

The team found the new moons almost by accident, thanks to a serendipitous alignment of Jupiter with their initial research project and some recently installed telescope technology.

“Fascinating,” says planetary scientist Doug Hemingway of the University of California, Berkeley. “This is a great reminder that when you build up the capability to study one thing,