The International Astronomical Union has just recognized the discovery of 128 new moons of the planet Saturnmade by a team of astronomers from Taiwan, Canada, the United States and France. With this figure, the planet reaches a total of 274 satellites, far from Jupiter’s 95 and almost double that all other planets of the solar system together.
Astronomers used the Canada-France-Hawái telescope (CFHT) to observe in great detail the environment of Saturn between 2019 and 2021. After an initial analysis that he threw 62 moons and an even greater number of other objects to identify, observed again for three consecutive months in 2023 and found that it was satellites. “Indeed, we find 128 new moons,” says the principal investigator, Edward Ashtonof the Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics of the Synical Academy of Taiwan. “According to our projections, I don’t think Jupiter ever scopes them.”
“Irregular moons”
The 128 new moons are irregular objects, captured by their host planet at the beginning of the solar system. “These moons have a few kilometers of size and are probably fragments of a smaller number of originally captured moons, which were fragmented by violent collisions, either with other Saturnine moons or with comets in its path,” says the astronomer and co -author of the finding Brett Gladmanin one Press note from the University of British Columbia
Given the high number of small moons compared to the large ones, the scientists believe that there is likely to produce a collision somewhere in the Saturn system in the last 100 million years, something relatively recent in astronomical terms. Otherwise, according to Gladman, if more time had elapsed, these moons would have collided with each other and would have disintegrated, which would have considerably reduced the proportion of small moons with respect to large ones.
In fact, most newly discovered moons are located near the Mundilfari subgroup of Saturn’s moons, which, given its size, number and orbital concentration, is probably the place of collision. “Our multiannual campaign, carefully planned, has generated a lot of new moons that reveal the evolution of the irregular population of Saturn natural satellites,” says Ashton.
The moons were identified by the “displacement and stacking” technique, in which astronomers acquire sequential images that draw the trajectory of the moon in the sky and combine them to achieve enough shine for their detection.
According to the newspaper The Guardianunderstanding the dynamics of the numerous Moons of Saturn could also help solve questions about the origin of Saturn’s rings, which scientists have suggested that they could be the consequences of a moon that was destroyed by the severity of the planet.
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