Saturn has 82 moons. Fifty-three moons are confirmed and named and another 29 moons are awaiting confirmation of discovery and official naming. Saturn’s moons range in size from larger than the planet Mercury — the giant moon Titan — to as small as a sports arena. The moons shape, contribute and also collect material from Saturn’s rings and magnetosphere.
Including provisional moons, Saturn has 82 total possible moons, while Jupiter has 79. Gas giants like these planets are so large and have such strong gravitational fields, they’re able to attract far more satellites than a planet, like say, Earth, with its one moon. And these numbers of moons will likely change in the future as astronomers continue observing Saturn and Jupiter and the many bodies that orbit them both. Jupiter may even overtake Saturn at some point in the future.
While Jupiter is known for its four large Galilean moons (so named because they were observed by Galileo with his 17th century telescope), Saturn has two moons that have drawn astronomers’ attention: Enceladus and Titan.
Both Enceladus and Titan are ocean moons, meaning they have subsurface oceans of liquid water. Titan even has surface lakes, though these are composed of methane and ethane. Enceladus is an icy moon known for spraying huge plumes of water up through its atmosphere into space; during the Cassini mission, astronomers were able to sample these geysers and that’s how they discovered the ocean underneath its icy crust.
Credit : How stuff works
Picture Credit : Google
