Saturn has just confirmed its title of “moon king” by updating the count to 274 satellites orbiting the gas giant. The record-breaking statistic puts Saturn far ahead of its rival satellites, as the ringed planet now officially has almost twice as many satellites orbiting it as all the other planets in the solar system combined.
An international team of astronomers recently discovered 128 new satellites around Saturn using the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope. Last year, Saturn reclaimed the title of lunar king with the discovery of 62 new satellites, bringing the total number to 145. The planet’s main rival in the solar system, Jupiter, has only 95 confirmed satellites.
These two gas giants have been competing for years to see who has the most satellites in their orbit, but it’s safe to say that Saturn has won this competition by a wide margin.
“Based on our predictions, I don’t think Jupiter will ever overtake Saturn,” said Edward Ashton, a postdoctoral researcher at the Sincia Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics and lead researcher on the discovery, in a statement from the University of British Columbia.
The research team observed the skies around Saturn with the Canada-France Hawaiian Telescope between 2019 and 2021, combining multiple telescopes to improve signals from astronomical objects. Their survey of the sky initially revealed 62 satellites, as well as many other objects that could not be identified. The astronomers then returned to the same areas of the sky for three months in 2023 to confirm the identities of the remaining objects – that is, to confirm that these objects were moons. This week, the International Astronomical Union recognized the team’s discovery.
According to the researchers, 128 of the newly discovered satellites are thought to be rogue satellites, i.e. tiny fragments of larger satellites that probably broke apart as a result of violent collisions with other satellites of Saturn or with comets flying past them. Most of the new satellites are located near Saturn’s Mundilfari subgroup of moons, a likely site of a collision that occurred over the past 100 million years within the Saturnian system, breaking larger bodies into the newly identified satellites.
“Our carefully planned, multi-year campaign has brought us a wealth of new satellites that tell us about the evolution of an irregular population of Saturn’s natural moons,” Ashton said.
The team has concluded satellite observations for the foreseeable future, as existing technology has likely reached its limit when it comes to detecting new moons around distant planets such as Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. For now, Saturn will hold on to its crown as the moon king of the solar system.
