Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Space
  3. News

Saturn takes the crown for planet with the most moons

Georgina Torbet
By

You’ve heard about the race to get humans back to the moon via the Artemis program, but there’s another moon race going on in our solar system, with planets vying for the title of most moons. Previously, Jupiter was the champion with its 95 known moons, but in an unexpected development, Saturn has pulled into the lead thanks to the recent discovery of 62 new moons there.

Astronomers observed Saturn’s rings and their immediate vicinity using new techniques that can detect fainter moons, and with the new discoveries, Saturn now boasts an impressive 145 moons. As well as being the planet in our solar system with the highest number of moons, it’s also the first planet with more than 100 known moons.

Saturn during Equinox
Saturn during Equinox. NASA / JPL / Space Science Institute

It’s difficult to see many of Saturn’s moons because they are so small and dim compared to the planet. The latest batch of moons was identified from data collected by the Canada France Hawaii Telescope (CFHT) using a technique called shift and stack, in which a set of sequential images is stacked into one to track the movement of a moon, allowing researchers to see objects that would be too dim to observe in a single image. That let the researchers go from seeing a selection of dots, which could be asteroids or other objects, to tracking distinct moons.

Recommended Videos

“Tracking these moons makes me recall playing the kid’s game [connect the dots], because we have to connect the various appearances of these moons in our data with a viable orbit,” said lead researcher Edward Ashton of the University of British Columbia in a statement. “But with about 100 different games on the same page and you don’t know which dot belongs to which puzzle.”

Related

This method was useful for identifying irregular moons, which are unlike regular moons as they have elliptical orbits. Previously, Saturn had 24 known regular moons and 58 known irregular moons, but the new research was able to more than double the number of irregular moons to 121.

As well as being a neat finding, the study of these irregular moons could help us to learn about how moons form. It is thought that the irregular moons formed in groups from collisions, as regular moons collided and splintered to form many smaller irregular moons.

“As one pushes to the limit of modern telescopes, we are finding increasing evidence that a moderate-sized moon orbiting backwards around Saturn was blown apart something like 100 million years ago,” said fellow researcher Brett Gladman.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Georgina Torbet
Georgina Torbet
Space Writer
Georgina is the Digital Trends space writer, covering human space exploration, planetary science, and cosmology. She…
Meet NASA’s trio of mini moon rovers set to launch next year
Part of NASA’s CADRE technology demonstration, three small rovers that will explore the Moon together show off their ability to drive as a team autonomously – without explicit commands from engineers – during a test in a clean room at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in December 2023.

NASA is ramping up its plans for exploring the moon, not only in terms of preparing to send astronauts there but also rovers. There's the VIPER rover, which will search for water around the lunar south pole, and now NASA is introducing a trio of mini rovers called CADRE, or Cooperative Autonomous Distributed Robotic Exploration. These will work together as a team to map the lunar surface, testing the possibilities of using rovers in groups for future exploration.

The rovers, developed at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, are just the size of a carry-on suitcase. They are designed to move independently but share data so they can cover more ground than a single rover could. They'll have to work over a lunar day, which is about two weeks, to map out features on the surface and look below ground using radar.

Read more
SpaceX sets target date for third test of world’s most powerful rocket
SpaceX's Super Heavy and Starship.

SpaceX is targeting next week for the third test flight of Starship, the world’s most powerful rocket.

The Elon Musk-led company said the Starship, which comprises the first-stage Super Heavy booster and the upper-stage Starship spacecraft, could launch “as soon as March 14,” though this depends on the Federal Aviation Administration handing it a launch permit in the coming days.

Read more
Jupiter’s icy moon Europa may be light on oxygen, lowering habitability hopes
This view of Jupiter’s icy moon Europa was captured by the JunoCam imager aboard NASA’s Juno spacecraft during the mission’s close flyby on Sept. 29, 2022.

When scientists look out into the solar system for places other than Earth that might be capable of hosting life, one of the leading locations of interest is Jupiter's moon Europa. Even though it is far from the sun and it appears on the surface to be icy and inhospitable, it has a liquid water ocean located beneath a thick icy crust, which could potentially allow for life to survive there. However, new research pours some cold water on this possibility, as it seems that the moon produces less oxygen than previously thought.

Researchers used data from the Juno mission to Jupiter, which has also performed flybys of Europa, to see how much hydrogen was being released from the moon's surface. Measured using Juno's Jovian Auroral Distributions Experiment (JADE) instrument, this data can be used to estimate how much oxygen is being produced -- and it's thought to be just 26 pounds every second, compared to previous estimates of up to 2,000 pounds per second.

Read more