Just when Jupiter had wrested the mantle as the solar system’s most mooned planet, Saturn has swooped in to reclaim its title.
An international team of researchers from the Academia Sinica Institute, University of British Columbia, Harvard Smithsonian Centre and Besancon Observatory identified 62 moons orbiting Saturn, bringing the total number of celestial satellites circling the planet to 145.
It comes just months after a dozen new moons were detected orbiting Jupiter, announced in February.
All 62 newly observed Saturnian moons are classed as irregular, due to their inclined and elliptical orbits at a substantially greater distance from the host planet than other, regular moons.
The findings were made using a ‘shift and stack’ technique previously employed to scour Uranus and Neptune’s neighbourhoods for moons.
Saturn’s rings much younger than planet itself
It involves taking a sequence of images along a moon’s predicted path and then stacking these atop each other to enhance the visibility of a space body. This technique helps to provide clarity to very small objects in orbit around distant planets. It’s also a technique that is used to image the depths of space beyond Neptune for a hypothesised ‘Planet X’ also orbiting our sun.
Described by the researchers as a painstaking process, the researchers spent two years verifying the pathways imaged over different nights.
“Tracking these moons makes me recall playing the kid’s game dot-to-dot, because we have to connect the various appearances of these moons in our data with a viable orbit, but with about 100 different games on the same page and you don’t know which dot belongs to which puzzle,” says the project’s lead scientist Dr Edward Ashton.
The new discoveries will be named after Gallic, Inuit and Norse gods as is conventional for irregular Saturnian moons.
Are you interested in the energy industry and the technology and scientific developments that power it? Then our new email newsletter Energise, launching soon, is for you. Click here to become an inaugural subscriber.
Originally published by Cosmos as All hail Saturn, moon king once more
Matthew Ward Agius
Matthew Agius is a science writer for Cosmos Magazine.
Read science facts, not fiction...
There’s never been a more important time to explain the facts, cherish evidence-based knowledge and to showcase the latest scientific, technological and engineering breakthroughs. Cosmos is published by The Royal Institution of Australia, a charity dedicated to connecting people with the world of science. Financial contributions, however big or small, help us provide access to trusted science information at a time when the world needs it most. Please support us by making a donation or purchasing a subscription today.
