Astronomers have discovered 62 new moons orbiting the planet Saturn. With this latest discovery, this ringed planet is ordained as the 'king of the moon'.
Previously, Saturn had 83 moons which were recognized by the International Astronomical Union. But with the astronomer's latest discovery, Saturn's total natural satellites are 145 months.
Saturn's newly discovered moon is classified as an 'irregular moon'. This term refers to objects that are affected by planetary gravity and eventually orbit in large, flat, or elliptical paths that are more inclined than typical lunar orbits.
Thus currently, Saturn has 121 irregular moons along with 24 regular ones. Irregular moons tend to cluster depending on the tilt of their orbits.
The tens of months were thanks to observations made by a team led by Edward Ashton, a post doctoral fellowship at the Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics.
Edward and other astronomers identified the objects surrounding Saturn using a technique called shift and stack to find smaller, dimmer moons around the planet.
This shift and stack technique uses a series of images that shift at the same speed as the moon's motion around Saturn. This method seems effective in finding dozens of new moons of Saturn.
"Tracking these moons makes me think of a child's game of dot-to-dot, because we had to gradually connect the various sightings of these moons over the last few weeks," said Ashton quoted from Space, Sunday (14/5/2023) .
Shift and stack is not a new technique, because it is used to look for moons on Neptune and Uranus. It's just that it just came to fruition when searching for Saturn's moons.
The data used by the team in finding Saturn's new moon was collected between 2019 and 2021 over a three-hour span by the Canada France Hawaii Telescope on Maunakea, Hawaii. Using the telescope allows astronomers to detect Saturn's moon with a diameter of 2.5 km.
Although several moons have been visible since 2019, it will take more than extra observations to confirm that it is a moon, not an asteroid making a short trip to Saturn.
Last February, 12 new ones were discovered with a total of 92 moons orbiting Jupiter, but with the latest discoveries, Saturn is now the planet with the most number of moons in the Solar System.
Even so, the largest number of moons may be replaced in the future as astronomers' observations continue.