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.”

  • alyaza [they/she]@beehaw.orgOPM
    3·
    1 day 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·
      1 day 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).