In early 2023, a group of scientists discovered 12 new moons on Jupiter, bringing the total to 95, making it the planet with the most satellites in the Solar System. That position is now held by Saturn, which previously had 83, but after the discovery of an additional 62 moons, its total has risen to 145.
As revealed by the Canada-based University of British Columbia (UBC), Jupiter has no chance of having more moons than Saturn, according to Brett Gladman, one of the researchers involved in the discovery and a UBC astronomer. said the planet “not only has it nearly doubled the number of moons it has, but it now has more satellites than all the other planets in the Solar System combined.”
The new sighting was made by two groups of astronomers, one that detected the moon around Saturn in the mid-2000s using the Subaru Telescope in Hawaii, while the other from 2019 using the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Saturn was observed till 2021. Mauna Kea Volcano. Although the possible moons had been detected many years earlier, it was only now possible to confirm that they were orbiting the planet.
As per the report, these newly discovered satellites are irregular moons, meaning they have large, inclined orbits and orbit the planet from 9.5 to 29 million kilometers away. “There are about 30 undiscovered in this size range and probably many hundreds, if not thousands, of smaller proportions,” explained Edward Ashton, who led the research with the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope and now works at the Academia Sinica. Are.” Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics in Taiwan.
Thus, Saturn now has 121 known irregular and 24 regular moons. The smallest satellite observed recently has a diameter of about 25 kilometers, while Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, is a little over 4,800 kilometers in diameter.
Scientists believe that the oldest moons collided and broke up, making them the way they are discovered today. Furthermore, it is predicted that these satellites will be of significant help in understanding some of the big questions about the Solar System, as they contain traces of events that took place in the primitive system.
