A team of scientists has discovered 128 previously unknown moons orbiting Saturn, in a discovery officially recognized by the International Astronomical Union. This brings the total number of known moons on the planet to 274, leaving Jupiter, with its mere 95 moons, in the dust.

The first hint that there are more moons waiting to be discovered came between 2019 and 2021, when 62 such objects were identified. At that time, other small objects were also spotted that cannot yet be labeled.

"With the knowledge that these were likely moons and that there were probably even more waiting to be discovered, we revisited the same celestial fields for three consecutive months in 2023. We certainly discovered 128 new moons. Based on our predictions, I don't think Jupiter will ever catch up," says astronomer Edward Ashton of Academia Sincia in Taiwan.

These moons aren't like Earth's moon - nice, big and pleasantly spherical. They're tiny, shaped like blobs and potatoes, just a few kilometres across - so-called irregular moons.

Researchers believe they originally represented a small group of objects caught by gravity in Saturn's orbit early in the solar system's history. A subsequent series of collisions shattered them into lunar pieces, leading to the overwhelming number of small rocks discovered by astronomers.

In fact, they believe that the collision must have happened only 100 million years ago, which is a very short period of time for a planet. The location of the moons in Saturn's Norse group of moons also suggests that this is where the recent collision occurred.

The Norse group are moons that orbit in a retrograde direction, at oblique angles and along elliptical paths outside Saturn's rings. Like the newly discovered moons, they also resemble the shape of potatoes. | BGNES