Teams of astronomers from Taiwan, Canada, the US, and France observe and bring in 128 additional moons orbiting gas giant Saturn The total number of confirmed months has reached 274. International Astronomy confirmed its discovery on March 11, 2025.
This image from Webb's Nircam Instrument shows some of Saturn, Rings and Moons. Image credits: NASA/ESA/CSA/STSCI/M. Tiscareno, Seti Institute/M. Hedman, University of Idaho/M. Elmutamide, Cornell University/M. Shorterter, SETI Institute/L. Fletcher, University of Leicester/H. Hammel, AURA/J. DEPASQUALE, STSCI.
Dr. Edward Ashton, a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics at Academia Cynthia, and his colleagues used the Canadian French Hawaii Television Scope (CFHT) to repeatedly monitor the sky around Saturn between 2019 and 2021, combining multiple images with details to enhance the astronomical object.
This first run produced 62 months. And there are even more other objects that were not available at that time.
“I revisited the same empty fields for the third consecutive month in 2023, knowing that these are probably moons and are likely waiting more to be discovered,” Dr. Ashton said.
“Of course, we found 128 new moons. I don’t think Jupiter will catch up based on our predictions.”
All 128 new moons are irregular moons, objects photographed by host planets in the history of the solar system.
“These moons are several kilometers in size and could be all fragments of the originally captured moon that have been broken by violent collisions with other Saturn’s moons and passing comets.”
“The mystery within Saturn’s irregular lunar system was a key motivation for the latest search. Given the small numbers compared to the larger moons, it is possible that there has been a collision somewhere within the Saturn system within the last 100 million years.”
“If not, these moons would have now collided with each other and been blown away by the blacksmith.
In fact, most of the newly discovered moons are located near the Mundirfari subgroup of Saturn’s moon, and may be the location of the collision, taking into account its size, number, and orbital concentration.
“Our carefully planned, multi-year campaign has brought us a new moon jackpot that tells us about the evolution of Saturn’s irregular natural satellite populations,” Dr. Ashton said.
“I don’t think using current technology is much better than what’s already done for the moons around Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.”
Source: www.sci.news
