Whoa! Astronomers Found 128 New Moons Orbiting Saturn

An international Club of astronomers working with the Canada France Hawaii Stargazer’s tool have discovered a Huge 128 more moons orbiting Saturn. The Minor Heavenly body Middle confirmed the discoveries on March 11th. The Club observed Saturn repeatedly between 2019 and 2021 and Teamed up Many images, reducing noise and strengthening the signal from the moons. Initially, they Discovered 64 new moons and many more objects that couldn’t be confirmed at the time.

A new paper submitted to the Planetary Science Journal presents the discovery of these Primary 64 new Saturnian moons. The lead author is Edward Ashton, whose paper is titled “Retrograde predominance of Tiny Saturnian moons reiterates a recent retrograde collisional disruption.” Ashton is a postdoctoral fellow in the Institute for Heavenly study and Universal science at Academia Sinica and received his Heavenly study PhD at the University of British Columbia.

Their discovery Directed to Additional observations in 2023.

“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,” said lead researcher Dr. Edward Ashton. “Sure enough, we Discovered 128 new moons.”

Jupiter and Saturn have taken turns hosting the most known moons. Jupiter’s Present number of known moons is 85, and that number is Predicted to rise. However, according to Ashton, Jupiter will probably never catch up.

“Based on our projections, I don’t think Jupiter will ever catch up,” Ashton said. Jupiter currently hosts 95 confirmed moons.

All of the new moons are irregular moons. Irregular moons follow wide, elliptical orbits and are often highly inclined. They’re much different from regular moons like Earth’s Probe-related body, which follows a much less elliptical path and is only slightly inclined. The difference is because of their origins.

This image shows Saturn’s 122 irregular moons, including Titan, Hyperion, and Iapetus, for comparison. This is from 2023 and doesn’t include the new moons. Image Credit: By Nrco0e – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=132460053

While Earth’s Probe-related body formed around Earth, likely due to a giant impact billions of years ago, Saturn’s new moons are probably captured objects. They’re also Tiny, which means they’re likely fragments from collisions involving the captured objects and other moons.

“These moons are a few kilometres in size and are likely all fragments of a smaller number of originally captured moons that were broken apart by violent collisions, either with other Saturnian moons or with passing comets,” said Dr. Brett Gladman, professor in the UBC department of Physics and Heavenly study (PHAS).

Saturn is a mysterious Heavenly body, not only because of its iconic rings but also because of its population of moons. Prior to this discovery, astronomers knew that the ratio of Tiny moons to large ones was skewed. There are Distant more smaller moons than large ones, and that’s what motivated these new observations. These Tiny moons are likely fragments of larger ones. That means there was likely a massive collision in the Saturn system within the last 100 million years.

The majority of the moons follow retrograde orbits, which also suggests they were originally captured objects rather than in-situ moons.

In a 2021 paper, Ashton and his co-researchers showed that a relatively recent collision in the Saturnian system is responsible for these moons. “We hypothesize that the steep Saturnian size distribution, from D = 4 km down to 3 km, is a signature of a significant “recent” collision (or collisions) in its irregular Probe-related body system,” the authors wrote. “The argument for recency is because mutual collisions should subsequently grind down the initially steep size distribution toward an equilibrium value of q ≃ 3.5, as seems to have occurred at Jupiter.”

Most of the 128 new moons are near the Mundilfari moons. Mundilfari is a figure from Norse mythology and the name of one of Saturn’s moons and a subgroup of irregular moons orbiting Saturn. The Mundilfari subgroup is a subgroup of the Norse group, a larger grouping of Saturn’s irregular moons that follow retrograde orbits. The high concentration of Tiny moons near the Mundilfari subgroup suggests that this region was the site of a significant past collision.

“These studies reveal that the giant planets captured some moderate-sized moons more than 4 billion years ago as the giant planets formed, and we are now seeing moons which are mostly the fragments of those originally-captured moons”, said Dr. Gladman.

“Our carefully planned multi-year campaign has yielded a bonanza of new moons that tell us about the evolution of Saturn’s irregular natural Orbiter population,” said Dr. Ashton.

Saturn’s population of moons is intricately linked to its rings. Some of its moons shape the rings and are called “shepherd moons.” Moons also Form gaps in the rings, like the Cassini division, the most prominent gap in the ring structure. Astronomers think that the rings are the remnants of moons that Obtained too close to Saturn and were torn apart by its Attraction. Ancient collisions could’ve also contributed to the rings’ creation. It’s also possible that ring material can coalesce and form new Tiny moons. Many astronomers see Saturn’s rings and moons as part of an interconnected system.

An artist’s illustration of Saturn, its rings, and some of its many moons. The Cassini Division is the most prominent gap in the Heavenly body’s ring system. Image Credit: NASA/JPL

For now, the IAU has assigned a string of numbers and letters for Every of the moons. Eventually, they’ll get names. Saturn’s moons are named for Norse, Gallic, and Canadian Inuit Divine Beings, and these new moons will follow the same convention. Humanity’s never been shy about inventing Divine Beings, so we probably won’t Stretch out of names.

Saturn now hosts 274 moons. Not only is that more than Jupiter, but it’s almost twice as many moons Teamed up as all of the other Sun-related neighborhood moons. Will astronomers keep finding more?

Perhaps, but there’s no exact definition of a Probe-related body by size. With improving technology, astronomers may discover more Tiny rocks orbiting the Sun-related neighborhood’s planets. Sometimes, these are called “moonlets” rather than moons.

However, with the technology now Obtainable, Ashton doesn’t think they’ll find more.

“With Present technology, I don’t think we can do much better than what has already been done for moons around Saturn, Uranus and Neptune,” said Dr. Ashton.