Astronomers say they have discovered over 100 new moons around Saturn. It is probably the result of a space smashup that left debris in the planet's orbit recently 100 million years ago.
The gas giants in our solar system have many moons, defined as objects that orbit around other bodies that are not planets or stars. Jupiter has 95 known moons, Uranus 28, and Neptune 16. The latest transport around Saturn 128 totals 274.
“This is the biggest batch of new moons,” said Mike Alexandersen of Harvard Smitonian Astrophysics, author of a paper that will publish discoveries that will be published in the next few days in the American Astronomical Association's research notes.
Many of these months are only a few miles of rock, smaller rocks compared to ours, which is 2,159 miles. However, as long as they have trackable trajectories around the parent body, scientists cataloging objects in the solar system consider them the moon. That is the responsibility of the International Astronomical Union, which ratified 128 new Saturn on Tuesday.
Edward Ashton of the Academic Ashinica Astronomy Institute in Taiwan, the lead author of the upcoming paper, has the right to naming the object.
“Who will get the right to name them,” said Dr. Alexandersen, who works with the International Astronomical Union to confirm the existence of objects in the solar system. The current naming scheme for the moon of Saturn is based on Nordic and other mythological characters.
“Maybe at some point, they'll have to expand their naming scheme further,” Dr. Alexandersen said.
The moon was discovered in 2023 in Mauna Kea, Hawaii using the Canadian French Hawaii Telescope. Dr. Ashton and his colleagues were able to observe patches of space near Saturn and track the movements of the previously unknown moon over time.
“We need to be able to prove that the object is in orbit around the planet,” said Dr. Ashton, who is responsible for finding 62 new Saturn's new moons two years ago.
All the months are irregular. This means that it has a smaller orbit on a very angular slope compared to Saturn's equator, often moving the planet backwards compared to other major moons. They cannot collect much else about them, as they are just a point of faint light in the telescope. But they range from around 6.5 million to 18 million miles from Earth. For comparison, the planet's rings span only 175,000 miles, with its main moons (including Titan and Enceladus) up to 2 million miles apart.
The existence of so many moons around Saturn suggests multiple dramatic collisions in the universe. Dr. Ashton and his team believe that the irregular moon was captured by Saturn at some point in its history. Some could be fragments of large objects that have hit other parts of the solar system, while others could be fragments of collisions between a few dozen miles of moons that crashed together in Saturn's orbit.
The team grouped many months and identified potential families who could have come from the same conflict. Brett Gladman, author of a paper at the University of British Columbia, said:
A particularly interesting subgroup is named Mundirfari after the Nordic mythological god, and includes 47 of the 128 new months. The team believes that this subgroup could be the result of a collision within Saturn's orbit, which was recently 100 million years ago.
The age of this group could be a window into chaotic activity in the outer solar system. This is assumed to be milder than usual for the past 100 million years.
“This means there could be a crash event and you'll see rap shotguns in the small moon population,” said Michele Banister, an astronomer at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand.
Learning more about these satellites is difficult given their small size, but astronomers may be able to study them with James Webb's space telescope, said Heidi Hammel, an astronomer with the Association of University for Astronomical Research.
Dr. Ashton said there could be more moons around Saturn, awaiting discovery in thousands.
But he may leave those discoveries to others.
“I'm getting a little moon-out now,” he said.
