Astronomers Discover 128 New Moons for Saturn

Saturn has always been our solar system’s ring king. Turns out it’s probably the moon monarch, too.

Scientists define a moon as any naturally-occurring object with a trackable orbit around a planet. It could be as big as Earth’s moon, which is 2,159 miles in diameter. But some are just a couple of miles across. And while Earth has only one, other planets can have dozens. Mars has two. Neptune has 16. Uranus has 28. And Jupiter has 95. But Saturn? 

It has 274!

Astronomers recently found 128 new moons circling Saturn. Most of them are millions of miles away but still caught in the gravitational pull of the gas giant. By comparison, Saturn’s rings are just 175,000 miles from the planet’s surface. The new moons were observed by astronomers through the Canada France Hawaii Telescope in Mauna Kea, Hawaii. They have been watching empty spots in space over time. When moons pass through those spaces, they change how light reaches the telescope. That reveals their positions. 

The fact that Saturn has so many moons tells a story about the planet’s past, astronomers say. At some point, there were a great many collisions in the space around Saturn. That may have included asteroids or other, larger moons. Those violent impacts led to the chunks of debris that we now see as small moons.

Traditionally, Saturn’s moons have been named after beings in Norse and Greek mythology. Its largest moon, “Titan,” is 50% bigger than Earth's moon. Dr. Edward Ashton has the rights to name the new batch of moons. He's the lead astronomer of the team that found them. The team might need to wait awhile. Ashton told The New York Times that, for now, he’s “a bit mooned out at the moment.”   

Reflect: If you could name a moon, what would you call it and why?

Gif of Saturn from GIPHY.