You thought Saturn’s 146 moons were impressive? Think again. The ringed planet’s moon count has nearly doubled with the official recognition of 128 new Saturnian moons, bringing its total to an astonishing 274 moons. That makes Jupiter’s 95 moons look paltry, and our single moon downright embarrassing. (Just kidding, we love our moon.)
A team of astronomers from Taiwan, Canada, the U.S., and France discovered the 128 new moons in 2023 using the Canada France Hawaii Telescope (CFHT). However, the moons weren’t officially recognized by the International Astronomical Union, the governing body for such affairs, until Tuesday (March 11).
Most of the moons are irregular and tiny, just a few miles across. By comparison, our moon has a diameter of 2,159 miles (3,475 kilometers). But they do have proven orbits around Saturn, which is a key element of official moon candidacy.
“These moons are a few kilometers 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,” Dr. Brett Gladman, professor in the University of British Columbia department of physics and astronomy, said in a statement.
Perhaps most impressively, this discovery of 128 new moons wasn’t the first time this team added to Saturn’s moon count. Between 2019 and 2021, the team’s observations with CFHT resulted in the addition of 62 moons to Saturn’s count.
“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, postdoctoral fellow in the Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics at Academia Sinica. “Sure enough, we found 128 new moons.”
Saturn’s first moon, Titan, was discovered in 1655 by Christiaan Huygens, and in the following decades, Jean-Dominique Cassini discovered Iapetus, Rhea, Dione and Tethys. It took another century or so for the next moons to be found: William Herschel spotted Mimas and Enceladus in 1789.
Over the subsequent 200 years, improvements in technology — namely the invention of photography, the development of massive telescopes, and the launch of space probes like the Voyager 1, Voyager 2 and Cassini — allowed us to see even more of Saturn’s moons.
But for now, the team suspects we might be maxed out. “With current technology I don’t think we can do much better than what has already been done for moons around Saturn, Uranus and Neptune,” said Ashton.
