Scientists find 128 new moons orbiting Saturn in shocking discovery

Scientists have recently uncovered that Saturn possesses far more moons that were previous unknown.

A team of experts uncovered 128 new moons around the planet, which is famous for its striking ring system.

Between 2019 and 2021, scientists identified 62 objects around the gas giant which later turned out to be moons. More small objects were also spotted, but they were unable to give them a designation at the time.

“With the knowledge that these were probably moons, and that there were likely even more waiting to be discovered, we revisited the same sky fields for three consecutive months in 2023,” astronomer Edward Ashton from Academia Sincia in Taiwan told Science Alert.

All together Saturn now has a grand total of 274 moons, leaving Jupiter the planet with the second highest number of moons in our Solar System with 95.

Ashton said: “Sure enough, we found 128 new moons. Based on our projections, I don't think Jupiter will ever catch up."

Enceladus is the sixth biggest of Saturn's moons Creative Commons

The newly discovered moons are not like Earth’s large spherical moon, they are instead “potato-shaped” moonlets that measure just a few kilometres across. These objects are known as irregular moons.

Experts believe these objects were originally part of a small cluster that was captured by Saturn’s gravity early in the Solar System’s formation.

Over time, a series of collisions likely shattered the cluster into fragments, creating the abundance of small space objects astronomers are now able to observe and categorise.

The researchers propose that one such collision could have happened as recently as 100 million years ago, a very brief span in the lifespan of a planet. The position of these moons with Saturn’s norse group (a large collection of moons with an irregular shape) further supports this idea, suggesting that this region is where the collision took place.

The Norse group consists of moons that orbit in a retrograde direction, at inclined angles, and along elliptical paths, outside of Saturn’s rings.

In case you didn’t know, it is widely believed that Earth got its moon as a result of the “giant impact theory”, which proposes that there was a giant impact between the early Earth and a Mars-sized object, named Theia, with the debris from the collision coalescing to form our natural satellite - it is not made of cheese.

The latest discovery about the whopping number of moons Saturn has around it has been officially recognised by the International Astronomical Union.

Why not read:

• Scientists say part of Saturn will disappear by 2025
• Planet Earth may have once had a Saturn-like ring say scientists

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