Astronomers discover 128 new moons orbiting Saturn

[Morrison71]

Astronomers have discovered 128 new moons orbiting Saturn, giving it an insurmountable lead in the running tally of moons in the solar system.

Until recently, the "moon king" title was held by Jupiter, but Saturn now has a total of 274 moons, almost twice as many as all the other planets combined. The team behind the discoveries had previously identified 62 Saturnian moons using the Canada France Hawaii telescope and, having seen faint hints that there were more out there, made further observations in 2023.

"Sure enough, we found 128 new moons," said the lead researcher, Dr Edward Ashton, a postdoctoral fellow in the Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics at the Academia Sincia in Taiwan. "Based on our projections, I don't think Jupiter will ever catch up."

Astronomers discover 128 new moons orbiting Saturn

Planet now has 274 moons, almost twice as many as all the other planets in the solar system combined

www.theguardian.com

 

[Uniformed_ReRe]

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Astronomers have discovered 128 new moons orbiting Saturn, giving it an insurmountable lead in the running tally of moons in the solar system.

Until recently, the "moon king" title was held by Jupiter, but Saturn now has a total of 274 moons, almost twice as many as all the other planets combined. The team behind the discoveries had previously identified 62 Saturnian moons using the Canada France Hawaii telescope and, having seen faint hints that there were more out there, made further observations in 2023.

"Sure enough, we found 128 new moons," said the lead researcher, Dr Edward Ashton, a postdoctoral fellow in the Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics at the Academia Sincia in Taiwan. "Based on our projections, I don't think Jupiter will ever catch up."

Astronomers discover 128 new moons orbiting Saturn

Planet now has 274 moons, almost twice as many as all the other planets in the solar system combined

www.theguardian.com

 

[desihawk]

pretty cool but it comes as bit of a shock to me that we haven’t even catalogued the moons of the biggest planets in the solar system yet

 

[The Tradition]

pretty cool but it comes as bit of a shock to me that we haven’t even catalogued the moons of the biggest planets in the solar system yet

And with Trump slashing federal funding, we never will... amirite?

 

[mnole03]

Me at the meeting,

 

[desihawk]

And with Trump slashing federal funding, we never will... amirite?

until one of those moons gets named greenland

 

[Hoosierhawkeye]

Is there a minimum size to be considered a moon. Because it feels like any rock orbiting a planet gets labeled as a moon.

I mean Mars has 2 moons and they are tiny AF. Deimos's escape velocity is so small that you could literally jump off of it.

 

[JasonTAlexanderJR]

Haven’t we flown by Saturn numerous times. No one has noticed 128 moons until bow.

 

[Dauminator]

I think there's a problem in that NASA calls any rock in orbit a moon. Earth should be recognized as the rightful kind with the 500,000 pieces of debris we're chucked up into ours.