Solar system has a new 'moon king' with 274 moons circling around it

The solar system has a new “moon king” and it’s Saturn. The planet has snatched the title from Jupiter after scientists discovered that 128 new moons are orbiting Saturn, taking its total tally to 274.

“Sure enough, we found 128 new moons. Based on our projections, I don’t think Jupiter will ever catch up,” said the lead researcher, Dr Edward Ashton.

The research team had previously detected 62 moons orbiting Saturn using the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope. Suspecting the presence of additional moons, they conducted further observations in 2023, leading to new discoveries.

As of February 2024, Jupiter has 95 moons with confirmed orbits.

Saturn’s moons get recognised

The International Astronomical Union formally recognised all of Saturn’s moons this week. The moons are yet to get names but it is confirmed that they will be named after Gallic, Norse and Canadian Inuit gods. For now, they are known by numbers.

How were they discovered?

Astronomers used the “shift and stack” technique to identify the moons, capturing a series of images that follow the moon’s movement across the sky and merging them to enhance visibility.

All 128 newly discovered moons are classified as “irregular moons,” small, potato-shaped objects only a few kilometres wide. The growing number of these celestial bodies raises the possibility of future debates over what truly qualifies as a moon.

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“I don’t think there’s a proper definition for what is classed as a moon. There should be,” Ashton said.

The discovery of Saturn’s several moons might hold answers to the origins of its rings that scientists think might be a consequence of a moon ripping apart due to the planet’s gravity.

Does the new discovery mean anything?

Studying this abundance of tiny moons could provide scientists with insight into a chaotic era in the early solar system when planets moved in unstable orbits and frequent collisions shaped their evolution.

The newly discovered moons appear in distinct groups, indicating they likely originated from larger objects that broke apart in collisions within the past 100 million years. They all follow large, elliptical orbits that are tilted compared to the paths of moons closer to the planet.