Astronomers discover 128 more moons around Saturn
Using a ground-based telescope, astronomers have now identified 128 new moons circling Saturn, bringing its moon count to 274, more than the total moons around all the other planets in the solar system combined.
Edward Ashton at Academia Sinica in Taipei, Taiwan, and his colleagues found the new moons with the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope, revealing dozens that have previously evaded astronomers. They took hours of images of Saturn, adjusted them for the planet’s movement through the sky and stacked them on top of each other to reveal objects that would otherwise be too dim to see.
All the new moons are between 2 and 4 kilometres in diameter and are likely to have been formed hundreds of millions or even billions of years ago in collisions between larger moons, says Ashton.
That Saturn has so many moons should surprise no one. Saturn actually has possibly millions, maybe even billions, of moons, if you count every particle in its rings. In fact, the gas giant poses a problem for astronomers in defining what a moon actually is. How small must an object be before you stop calling it a moon?
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Using a ground-based telescope, astronomers have now identified 128 new moons circling Saturn, bringing its moon count to 274, more than the total moons around all the other planets in the solar system combined.
Edward Ashton at Academia Sinica in Taipei, Taiwan, and his colleagues found the new moons with the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope, revealing dozens that have previously evaded astronomers. They took hours of images of Saturn, adjusted them for the planet’s movement through the sky and stacked them on top of each other to reveal objects that would otherwise be too dim to see.
All the new moons are between 2 and 4 kilometres in diameter and are likely to have been formed hundreds of millions or even billions of years ago in collisions between larger moons, says Ashton.
That Saturn has so many moons should surprise no one. Saturn actually has possibly millions, maybe even billions, of moons, if you count every particle in its rings. In fact, the gas giant poses a problem for astronomers in defining what a moon actually is. How small must an object be before you stop calling it a moon?
Readers!
My annual February birthday fund-raising drive for Behind the Black is now over. Thank you to everyone who donated or subscribed. While not a record-setter, the donations were more than sufficient and slightly above average.
As I have said many times before, I can’t express what it means to me to get such support, especially as no one is required to pay anything to read my work. Thank you all again!
For those readers who like my work here at Behind the Black and haven't contributed so far, please consider donating or subscribing. My analysis of space, politics, and culture, taken from the perspective of an historian, is almost always on the money and ahead of the game. For example, in 2020 I correctly predicted that the COVID panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Every one of those 2020 conclusions has turned out right.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
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I do not know the requirements for “moon” status, but I wonder if the clearing of an object’s orbital path, similar to the requirement for planet status, is one of them.
Yes, are all these object REALLY moons?
Strange there is no mention of orbital elements, such as inclinations.
“The newly discovered moons have been recognised by the International Astronomical Union (IAU), and Ashton and his team will now get the right to name them. Ashton, who is Canadian, says he has approached a representative from Canada’s Indigenous peoples for suggestions, but is also mulling the idea of some kind of public naming contest.”
Easy: “Hoser001” through “Hoser274”
Ray Van Dune: Notice that the last thing Ashton considers is honoring any Canadians from his country’s past. Instead, he wants to give the laurels to the primitive stone age inhabitants who prior to the arrival of western civilization considered a good evening’s entertainment the slow and horrible torture of prisoners, including men, women, and even children.
And I am not making that up. Anyone who has spent any time educating themselves about early Canadian history will know this is true.
They might run out of hearth gods and heroes before Saturn runs out of moons. Ashton is probably just looking for names not used before
Anyone use Lord Dunsany?
Not a Canadian myself but plenty of extended/inlaw family is, including some Indian blood. None are amused by the whole “Indian School Graveyard” myth beloved of the Canadian left.
Yeah, I think when we’re getting down to under 5km, I am tempted to call them “moonlets.” Which, I know, ain’t a scientific term.
One thing I will say is that if Mr Ashton conducts this exercise with Jupiter, I fear he is going to need a lot more resources.
Re; Naming. I don’t know if Ashton’s motivations are oikophobic, but maybe he could consider naming the ones big enough to warrant a name after Canadian recipients of the Victoria Cross? There are 99 of them, at last check.
Until now, the convention for naming Saturnian moons has been to use a) names of Greco-Roman Titans, b) different characters of the Greco-Roman mythology, or c) or giants from other (Gallic, Inuit, or Norse) mythologies. Is the IAU going to abandon that convention?
“One of These Days Alice…”
Futurama
https://youtu.be/0P84NiVGJsw
(0:32)
”How small must an object be before you stop calling it a moon?”
I would suggest one requirement for being a moon should be similar to that of a planet: being in hydrostatic equilibrium (a measure of how much gravity forces the object to be round). Objects smaller than that orbiting a planet should be called moonlets.
So moons and moonlets orbit planets, and planets and asteroids orbit stars.
I like the hydrostatic equilibrium requirement as a possible limiter.
And just to clarify… a body needs to reach around 400 kilometers (248 miles) for icy bodies and 600 kilometers (372 miles) for rocky bodies to achieve hydrostatic equilibrium. By this constraint, then, only seven of Saturn’s moons (Titan, Rhea, Iapetus, Dione, Tethys, Enceladus, and Mimas) would qualify for the title…and the other 266 would be “moonlets.”