Many of these moons are remains of planets left behind after moon-moon collision.
For years, ringed planet Saturn was the planet with the most moons. But it was dethroned as the ‘moon king’ in February this year after astronomers discovered 12 new moons around gas giant Jupiter, which took it’s the total tally of its moons to 95. But now, a team of space scientists led by the University of British Columbia has discovered 62 new moons of Saturn, taking the official tally to 145. By overtaking Jupiter, Saturn has also become the first planet to have over 100 discovered moons, said the researchers.
“Saturn not only has nearly doubled its number of moons, it now has more moons than all the rest of the planets in the solar system combined,” Professor Brett Gladman, an astronomer at the university who was involved in the observations, was quoted as saying by The Guardian.
The new celestial bodies are being identified by numbers, but will soon be given names after Gallic, Norse, and Canadian Inuit gods, in keeping with the convention for Saturn’s moons, the outlet further said.
Many of these new space objects are remains of planets left behind after moon-moon collision and are irregular in shape.
Scientists, though, hope that Jupiter may temporarily inch ahead, for now, Saturn has more moons.
“At a fixed size there are three times more Saturn satellites than Jupiter satellites. They’re not all known yet, but we already know the final answer,” Mr Gladman told The Guardian.
Before this discovery, Saturn had 83 moons recognised by the International Astronomical Union (IAU), according to space.com.
The team that discovered these new celestial bodies around Saturn used a technique called “shift and stack”, which uses a set of images shifting at the same speed at which a moon moves through the sky to enhance the signal of the fainter object.
Moons that are too faint to be seen in single images can reveal themselves in the resultant “stacked image”, said the outlet.
The team used data collected by the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT) on top of Maunakea in Hawaii between 2019 and 2021.
