Saturn again became “king of the moons” passing Jupiter

The new discoveries mean that Saturn has not only reclaimed the top spot in the list of most known moons, surpassing Jupiter with 95, but is also the first planet with over 100 moons discovered.

Over the last two decades the environment of Jupiter has been extensively studied for moons in ever greater detail. In its latest study, Edward Ashton’s team, which began the research program in UBC and is now a postdoc at Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, used a technique known as “shift and stack” to find fainter (and therefore smaller) moons. The method has been used for searches for moons around Neptune and Uranus, but never for Saturn.

All new moons detected are of the “irregular moons” class (irregular moons) thought to have originally been “captured” from their home planet long ago. They are characterized by their long, elliptical and inclined orbits compared to “normal” moons. The number of known “irregular moons” of Saturn has more than doubled, reaching 121 – 58 were known before the research began. Including the 24 regular moons, there are currently a total of 145 recognized by the International Astronomical Union.

Irregular moons tend to cluster into orbital groups based on the inclination of their orbits. In the Saturn system there are three such groups, whose names come from different mythologies: There are the group Inuit, the team Gallic and the largest group Norse. All new moons belong to one of the three known groups, with the group Norse to remain the largest.