New Moons of Saturn

A NEW DISCOVERY IS CHANGING THE WAY WE THINK ABOUT THE MOONS IN OUR SOLAR SYSTEM.

- Nick D'Alto

Tiny, lumpy, and whizzing around their planet in all directions. And not just one or two of them, but an entire swarm. Welcome to the surprising new moons of Saturn.

Astronomer Edward Ashton led the team that recently discovered an astonishing 63 tiny new natural satellites orbiting around the sixth planet from the Sun. His findings pushed Saturn past Jupiter for the most moons in our solar system. No one has ever found this many moons before.

Ashton only located the new moons by breaking many of the unwritten rules about how and where to search for moons and how they should be expected to behave. He began this research while a graduate student at the University of British Columbia in Canada and now works at Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics in Taiwan. His discoveries may change the way we look at all moons-including our own.

Why Keep Searching?

Astronomers have been finding moons in orbit around Saturn for centuries. It began not long after the introduction of the telescope, which happened in 1608. Dutch science pioneer Christiaan Huygens discovered the first known moon of Saturn in 1655; it was named Titan.

By using ever-more powerful instruments over the years, astronomers found nearly a hundred more moons. So, why expect to find even more than that? "Based on a planet's size and other traits, we can estimate how the moons that orbit around that planet should vary in size and what percentage are big and small," Ashton explains. "For Saturn, smaller moons were still missing from the total."

Tough to Spot

But these missing moons around Saturn would prove difficult to spot. "They'd be very small and dim," Ashton says. "Plus, they'd be moving rapidly, so they wouldn't stay in the same place long."