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No planet has as many moons as Saturn - 62 new moons discovered

2023-05-17T11:27:30.285Z

Highlights: A research team finds 62 new moons around the planet Saturn. It is the first planet in the solar system to have more than 100 moons. Jupiter previously held the record with 83 confirmed moons. All of Saturn's newly discovered moons are irregular moons, according to the research team. The discovery may have been just the beginning of the "potentially thousands" of irregular moons around Saturn and Jupiter. And Uran and Neptune could also have such moons - but their distance from the Sun makes them difficult to detect.



The planet Saturn has an impressive ring system. The rings could have been formed by a lost moon, researchers suspect. (Archive image) © NASA/JPL/ESA/dpa

A research team finds 62 new moons around the planet Saturn. It is the first planet in the solar system to have more than 100 moons.

Taipei – For many years, it has been a kind of competition in the solar system: Which planet has more moons – Saturn or Jupiter? Most recently, Jupiter was able to overtake Saturn with 92 known moons, which previously held the record in the solar system with 83 confirmed moons. Now, however, the race could be decided for a longer period of time: A research team has discovered 62 new moons in orbits around Saturn – bringing the "Lord of the Rings" to a total of 145 known moons and letting him pull away in competition with Jupiter.

Thanks to an image processing method used for the first time in Saturn, a research team led by astronomer Edward Ashton (Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics in Taiwan) has discovered the 62 new moons. For this purpose, images of Saturn's surroundings were taken with the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT) in Hawaii, which were then processed using the "shift and stack" method. By moving and stacking many consecutive images taken over a three-hour period, the research group was able to locate Saturn's moons up to 2.5 kilometers in diameter.

Moons in the Solar System
Mercury0
Venus0
Earth1
Mars2
Neptune14
Uranus27
Jupiter92
Saturn145

Search for new moons of Saturn: Like the children's game "point-to-point"

However, to discover a moon, it is not enough to find it near a planet – after all, it could also be an asteroid passing nearby. As a rule, lunar candidates are observed again and again for several years in order to determine their orbits. "Tracking these moons reminds me of the 'point-to-point' game because we need to connect the different manifestations of these moons in our data to a usable orbit," Edward Ashton said in a statement. The search for the moons is comparable to "about 100 different games on the same page and you don't know which point belongs to which puzzle."

All of Saturn's newly discovered moons are irregular moons, according to the research team. This refers to moons whose orbits are more extreme and whose distances are greater than those of regular moons. Research suggests that they were "captured" by Saturn's gravity a long time ago. Currently, the ringed planet has 121 irregular moons and 24 regular moons recognized by the International Astronomical Union (IAU). Saturn is thus the first planet to have more than 100 known moons.

Saturn has the most moons – now significantly more than Jupiter

The newly discovered moons of Saturn can be classified by the research team into three groups: the Gallic group, the Nordic group and the Inuit group. All moons of a group move in a similar orbit. Research assumes that the three groups are the result of collisions. A better understanding of the distribution of moons in Saturn's orbit can shed light on what happened in the past. The Norse group, a group of moons orbiting Saturn in the opposite direction to the other moons, is thought to have formed when a larger moon broke up in the last 100 million years.

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Researcher Brett Gladman (University of British Columbia), who was involved in the discovery of Saturn's 62 new moons, explains: "The further you go to the limits of modern telescopes, the more evidence we find that a medium-sized moon orbiting Saturn backwards was blown up about 100 million years ago."

Saturn and Jupiter could have "potentially thousands" of moons

The discovery of Saturn's moons may have been just the beginning: researcher Ashton estimates that there are "potentially thousands" of irregular moons around the planets Saturn and Jupiter. And Uranus and Neptune could also have such moons - but their distance from the Sun makes them difficult to detect. Saturn could have three times more moons than Jupiter, Ashton told The New York Times. Why this is so is still unclear to researchers. (tab)

Source: merkur

All news articles on 2023-05-17

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