Astronomers have announced the discovery of 128 moons of Saturn. Thus, the total number of known moons of the sixth planet has increased to 274, which is an absolute record for the Solar System.
In 2023, an international team of researchers discovered 62 new moons of Saturn at once. At the same time, during the observations, astronomers noticed faint signs of the existence of additional moons. They used the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope, which is located on top of the Mauna Kea volcano, to test it.
Observations confirmed the assumption of astronomers. On March 11, they reported the discovery of 128 new, previously unknown moons of Saturn. This brings the total number of Saturn’s moons to 274. This is more than the total number of moons of all the other planets in the Solar System combined. By comparison, Jupiter has a family of 95 moons, Uranus has 28 moons, and Neptune has 16 moons.
All newly discovered moons are small objects, whose diameter does not exceed a few kilometers. For most of them there is not a complete description of the orbit yet, but it is known that the main part belongs to the so-called Scandinavian group. It represents a family of retrograde moons. This is the name given to moons that move around a planet in a direction opposite to the direction of its rotation around its axis.
If a moon forms with a planet, it will orbit in the same direction that the planet orbits. Consequently, the retrograde orbit indicates that it originally formed elsewhere before being captured by gravity.
According to scientists, such a significant number of small retrograde moons is explained by the consequences of a relatively recent (by astronomical standards) collision, which occurred about 100 million years ago. It involved several large moons that were once captured by Saturn’s gravity. It resulted in the formation of a large amount of debris.
Can any planet in the Solar System, like Jupiter, beat Saturn’s record? According to the researchers, as the telescopes are improved, many more such finds await us. But they don’t think Jupiter will ever manage to “catch up” to Saturn in terms of the number of moons.
According to Sciencealert
