Researchers have found 20 new moons orbiting Saturn, increasing its tally of moons to 82, surpassing Jupiter’s 79. The newly-discovered moons were about 5 kms in diameter, with seventeen of the moons orbiting the planet backwards in a direction opposite to that of Saturn’s rotation around its axis (retrograde motion). The other three moons orbited in the same direction as Saturn’s rotation (prograde motion).
The scientists who made the discovery, led by Scott Sheppard at the Carnegie Institute of Science in Washington, used the powerful Subaru telescope in Hawaii to gather data over several years, as well as new computing algorithms, to track potential moons and orbits.
Sheppard said the discovery of the moons can help scientists learn how planets in our solar system were formed.
“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,” Sheppard said in a release from Carnegie on Monday.
Sheppard’s team thinks that some of the newly discovered moons were once part of a larger moon that broke up.
Seventeen of the moons have a retrograde orbit, meaning they orbit in the opposite direction as Saturn and its other moons. All of the newly discovered moons take between two and three years to travel once around Saturn.
Sheppard says there are likely more moons to be found around Saturn that are even smaller than the latest discoveries, but says astronomers will need larger telescopes to find them.
While the ringed planet has bested Jupiter in the number of moons, Jupiter still has the edge on another moon statistic — the biggest moon. Jupiter’s Ganymede moon is more than 5,268 kilometers in diameter, almost half the size of Earth.
Carnegie set up a contest to name the newly discovered moons, with the new names based on Inuit, Norse and Gallic mythology. The contest opened Monday and will last for two months.
Credit : VOA News
Picture Credit : Google
