Jupiter has dropped out of the race with Saturn for the title of the most moon-rich celestial body in the solar system. The latest observations have revealed 128 new satellites around Saturn, bringing the total number of moons around this giant planet to 274. Jupiter has only 95 satellites, or three times less, which leaves it no chance of closing the gap.
The first hint that Saturn may have many undiscovered satellites came between 2019 and 2021, when 62 new objects were discovered near it. Other small bodies were also seen at the time, but could not be identified.
“Knowing that these were likely moons and that there were probably more of them, we studied the same parts of the sky for three months in 2023“, said astronomer Edward Ashton of Taiwan's leading research institute Academia Sinica. — As a result, we discovered 128 new satellites. Based on our predictions, I don't think Jupiter will ever catch up with Saturn in this respect."
It should be noted that almost all of Saturn's new satellites are not classic moons like Earth's. These are small, irregularly shaped celestial bodies, only a few kilometers in diameter. Scientists believe that they were originally a small group of objects captured by Saturn's gravity early in the history of the solar system. A series of collisions subsequently broke them into small fragments, leading to the predominance of small rocky bodies that astronomers see.
These catastrophic collisions occurred relatively recently in cosmic terms - only 100 million years ago. An example is given from the previously discovered Scandinavian group of satellites of Saturn. They have already been studied from this point of view: they are also small in size, have an irregular shape and move in elongated orbits, for which they are classified as irregular satellites.