As many as 128 newly discovered moons, each potato-like and uneven, have been identified orbiting Saturn, increasing the total to 274 moons around the planet.
A report by The Guardian states that with the recently discovered moons, Saturn possesses double the amount of moons compared to all other planets together.
“Indeed, we discovered 128 additional moons,” Dr. Edward Ashton, a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics at Academia Sincia in Taiwan, was cited in the report.
“Based on our projections, I don’t think Jupiter will ever catch up,” he mentioned.
Previously, the same group of astronauts discovered 62 Saturnian moons utilizing the Canada France Hawaii telescope.
As of February 5, 2024, Jupiter possesses a complete count of 95 moons.
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The report states that the International Astronomical Union has officially acknowledged the new moons of Saturn and has designated them sequences of letters and numbers.
Subsequently, the moons were named after deities from Gallic, Norse, and Canadian Inuit mythology.
The moons were detected using the “shift and stack” method, where astronomers capture sequential images that follow the moon’s trajectory in the sky and merge them to enhance the moon’s brightness for detection, the report stated.
According to the report, all 128 newly discovered moons are “irregular moons,” which are potato-shaped entities measuring only a few kilometers in size.
