Scientists have discovered 62 new moons orbiting Saturn, bringing its total to 145 and surpassing Jupiter's count of 95. Using a technique called 'shift and stack,' the international research team, led by Edward Ashton, found moons as small as 1.5 miles in diameter. The findings could provide insigh
This image of cloud activity on Titan was captured by Cassini. Credit: Credit: NASA/JPL/SSI
“Tracking these moons makes me recall playing the kid’s game Dot-to-Dot because we have to connect the various appearances of these moons in our data with a viable orbit,” explains Edward Ashton, “but with about 100 different games on the same page and you don’t know which dot belongs to which puzzle.”to find the moons. It senses smaller, fainter moons by shifting a set of sequential images at the rate that the moon is moving across the sky.
The International Astronomical Union is careful about recognizing new moons. A single observation doesn’t meet the threshold, as that could simply indicate an asteroid passing by. Instead, an object has to be tracked over time before the IAU will recognize it as a moon. Some of the new moons were observed in the past, but not enough to be confirmed.. Their orbits are irregular, meaning they’re distant and inclined and often eccentric or retrograde.
This image shows the paths of four of the new moons as they orbit Saturn during the period 2019-2021. The coloured dots mark the observed position for each moon; the dashed curve shows the orbit that connects them. Credit: University of British Columbia Moons tend to find themselves in coordinated orbital groups based on orbital tilt. Saturn has three of these groups of moons: The
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