Astronomers Find 128 New Moons Around Saturn, Bringing Its Total to 274

Scientists have identified 128 additional moons orbiting Saturn, increasing its total to 274, according to the source.

The newly discovered moons are mostly small, spanning just a few miles across. This finding places Saturn ahead of Jupiter, which has 95 confirmed moons. The International Astronomical Union validated the discovery on Tuesday. The IAU classifies an object as a moon of it maintains a traceable orbit around a planet. Its the largest batch of new moons stated Mike Alexandersen at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics,who had contributed to the study The research is set to be published in Research Notes of the American Astronomical society.

Saturn Moon Names :

Edward Ashton from Taiwan’s Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics led the research and has the authority to name the newly discovered moons. As Alexandersen explained, the person who discovers a moon gets the right to name it. Currently, the moons of Saturn are named after figures from Norse mythology and other mythologies. “Maybe at some point they’ll have to expand the naming scheme further,” he added.

Saturn hidden moons :

The discoveries were made in 2023 with the use of the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope at Mauna Kea. The research team observed Saturn’s environment and tracked the movements of moons that were previously unknown. “You need to be able to prove that the object is in orbit around the planet,” Ashton said. He had previously discovered 62 moons of Saturn.

The irregular orbits of Saturn’s moons suggest a history of collisions. These moons follow steep orbital paths and, in some instances, travel in the opposite direction of Saturn’s main moons. Their orbits range from 6.5 million to 18 million miles from the planet. In comparison, Saturn’s rings stretch only 175,000 miles, and its primary moons, such as Titan and Enceladus, orbit within 2 million miles.