As It Happens5:47Saturn solidifies its title as moon king, with the discovery of 128 new moons
If you’re a fan of our night sky here on Earth and its singular moon, then you’d probably really, really love the view from Saturn.
A team of scientists — including a Canadian from the University of British Columbia — have identified an additional 128 moons orbiting the ringed planet, bringing Saturn’s total moon count to 274.
“Understanding how the planets formed and where [they] came from is always quite awe-inspiring,” Brett Gladman, a University of British Columbia professor and researcher who helped observe the new moons, told As It Happens host Nil Koksal.
The findings, which mean Saturn has more moons than the rest of the other planets in our solar system combined, were ratified on Tuesday by the International Astronomical Union.
Jupiter and Saturn have been locked in a battle for the most moons for years — with Saturn stealing the crown from Jupiter only two years ago when the same group of researchers found 64 additional moons orbiting it. But scientists say this discovery likely settles the score once and for all.
“We don’t think that Jupiter will ever be able to reclaim that title,” Gladman said.
He and the other scientists working on the project made the discovery using the Canada France Hawaii Telescope, a 3.6-metre optical telescope on the summit of the dormant volcano Mauna Kea on the Big Island of Hawaii.
Scientists have been capturing pictures of the moons using the telescope since 2019. The researchers aligned and layered 44 of those images on top of one another in order to enhance the appearance of the moons and determine what they were.
These moons are nothing like Earth’s very own, however. Sara Mazrouei, a planetary scientist and educational developer at Humber Polytechnic, says that while we tend to think of a spherical shape when we hear the word moon, anything that orbits a planet, or another body in space that is not a sun, is considered a moon.
Mazrouei says many of the moons surrounding other planets in our solar system — including the ones observed here — are in fact only a few kilometres across in size and oddly shaped, like an asteroid.
Those irregular shapes and small sizes also give clues into how the moons likely formed, Gladman says.
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The group of scientists believes that around the time Saturn was forming some four billion years ago, it pulled a few moderately large moons into its orbit. Over the preceding millennia, those moons have collided from time to time, breaking them into smaller pieces that continue to orbit Saturn, according to Gladman.
Each of those smaller pieces are considered individual moons, and is part of why Saturn’s tally is so high.
Mazrouei says that same smashing-up process could some day happen to Jupiter’s moons, allowing them to multiply. But she adds events like that are pretty rare — meaning Saturn’s title is fairly safe, at least for the next few hundred million years.
Regardless, she says it’s a good day to be a fan of the ringed planet.
“[My favourite] used to be Jupiter, but I have to say I have to think about it twice today,” Mazrouei said.