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

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.”

  • Rhaedas@fedia.io
    9·
    22 hours ago

    Unlike the planet/dwarf planet designation, it seems that a moon is a moon no matter its characteristics. That makes a debris field like Saturn quite interesting. Should there be a limit to what a moon is? Based on how number increases as size decreases, there are certainly far more we can’t easily detect from Earth.

    My thought is projection of orbit stability, which ignores the size but goes directly for whether or not it’s a temporary part of the planet’s system.

    • alyaza [they/she]@beehaw.orgOPM
      3·
      20 hours ago

      science kind of demands rigorous definitions so i can’t pretend to know how this would be accomplished but yes, at least in spirit, a lot of these moons definitely feel like they ought to be called moonlets or a similar term

      • Rhaedas@fedia.io
        2·
        20 hours ago

        Moonlet looks to be a term specific for ring-embedded moons (just Ring A?), based on wikipedia for the word and a link from there on a list of them. I don’t think these are even included in the list of main moons, but rather are perhaps larger masses of the ring itself that are serving as structure creators with their gravity influence (like the bigger shepherd moons on the edges).

      • Rhaedas@fedia.io
        3·
        21 hours ago

        It won’t leave, just slow to a much farther orbit, so that’s why I said future projection, or best we can do. Many of these moons seem to be in erratic and retrograde paths, something that can’t last even a “short” time, as you’d expect of remnants of breakups or of captured objects.