Saturn has 128 new moons – more than the rest of the planets combined

Another 128 moon were found orbiting SaturduraturBringing the total of the planet to 274, there are more than all other planets in our solar system. The advances in telescope technologies to be smaller objects of the planet, astronomers face a problem: How can a moon be just a rock?

Edward Ashton Taipei, Taiwan’s Academy of Sinica, Taiwan and his colleagues found new moonlights who followed the France-Hawaiian telescope, revealing dozens of astronomers before they fled. They took the pictures of Saturn, adjusted them from the sky of the planet’s movement and stacked them on top of each other to reveal objects that would be a little dark.

All new moon is diameter between 2 and 4 kilometers and are likely to form hundreds of million or millions of billion million ashton says Ashton says.

“Small stones are floating in space, so some may not find quite a achievement,” Ashton says. “But I think it’s important to have a catalog of all objects in the solar system”.

Despite the richness of the data collected by his team, the latter moon appears only like “blbs blobs”, as Ashton says. There are stronger telescopes that could solve more places in more details, Although many of the smaller areas of view, which means taking more images, he says.

The new moon found the International Astronomy Union (IAU), and Ashton and his team He will now get the right to name. Ashton, Canada, has said that the representative of the Indigenous Indigenous people in Canada has approached, but it is also promoting the idea of ​​a type of public designation competition.

Could there be more rent? Scientists have spent decades by increasingly strong telescopes who have paid in the last few years of scanning the area around Saturn. In 2019, 20 new lunars were foundand Ashton and his colleagues already had Find 62 In 2023, they found most often from 128. After all, more discoveries will require further advances in telescope technology, Ashton, thousands of lunars around Saturn.

Mike Alexanders At the small planet center, which records Lordship planetaries, it is likely that more moon can be found in our solar system to see the improvements in telescopes to see smaller objects. He will have to do what the decision does and does not count the moon.

“I know that he decided, because they are likely to name anything that will not be priority less than a kilometer. But that’s not the same as a moon,” says Alexandersen. “They will probably be appointed only if it goes to visit spacecraft.”

It is just a rock particle that makes up a part of the moon, which is part of a planet ring, probably will probably be a diameter between a mile and 1 meters. “Finally, it will probably not be my decision, it will be a cut, which will be more or less discussable. And it is likely to be relatively arbitrary,” says Alexandersen.

Elizabeth day Imperial College London says one day, they can be commercial reasons to have accurate maps of the solar system. “We may want to take resources from the solar system and the moon, so it has a great opportunity to understand where it is important, “he says the day.