Saturn Crowned ‘King of the Moons’ Following Massive Discovery

Astronomers have found 20 new moons orbiting Saturn (via Carnegie Institute for Science)

Astronomers have spotted another 20 moons orbiting Saturn, bringing its total to a whopping 82.

That’s three more satellites than Jupiter, the largest planet in the Solar System.

Each of the new discoveries, unveiled Monday by the International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center, is about three miles in diameter.

Seventeen of them orbit the planet “backwards” (in a retrograde direction), while the other three move in prograde.

A pair of forward-facing bodies, which sit close to Saturn, can complete an orbit in about two years; the more distant retrograde moons (as well as that final prograde satellite) take more than three years to move once around the planet.

“Studying the orbits of these moons can reveal their origins, as well as information about the conditions surrounding Saturn at the time of its formation,” the Carnegie Institute for Science’s Scott Sheppard said in a statement.

The outer moons appear to be grouped into three distinct clusters, based on the “inclinations of the angles” at which they revolve around the ringed planet.

Scientists think some of these orbs are the broken remnants of once-larger parent moons.

One of the newly discovered retrograde haul is the furthest known Saturnian planetoid.

“In the Solar System’s youth, the Sun was surrounded by a rotating disk of gas and dust from which the planets were born,” Sheppard explained. “It is believed that a similar gas-and-dust disk surrounded Saturn during its formation.

“The fact that these newly discovered moons were able to continue orbiting Saturn after their parent moons broke apart,” he continued, “indicates that these collisions occurred after the planet-formation process was mostly complete and the disks were no longer a factor.”

An artist’s conception of the 20 newly discovered moons orbiting Saturn (via Carnegie Institute for Science)

Saturn’s supplementary satellites were spotted by Sheppard, David Jewitt of UCLA, and Jan Kleyna from the University of Hawai’i using the Subaru telescope atop Mauna Kea volcano in Hawai’i.

Earlier this year, the Carnegie Institute held a contest to name five Jovian moons discovered in 2018 by Sheppard.

Now it needs your help again to name all 20 Saturnian planetoids.

Make sure to brush up on the general rules before tweeting your suggestion—along with an explanation and the hashtag #NameSaturnsMoons—to @SaturnLunacy by Dec. 6, 2019.

Photos, artwork, and videos are “strongly encouraged.”

More on Geek.com:

• NASA’s Shape-Shifting Robot Could One Day Explore Saturn’s Moons
• Hubble Captures Saturn’s ‘Phonograph Record’ Ring System
• NASA’s Upcoming Dragonfly Mission Will Explore Titan’s Icy Surface

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