I think we can all agree, our moon is iconic.

And with NASA’s Artemis mission heading there very soon, the hype is real, and for good reason.

That nightly beacon that we see every 24 hours all around the world is a fond reminder of the billions of other balls of rock and gas, fire and dust across our solar system and beyond.

But our moon is just one of 421 moons in our solar system, and it carves out a lonely figure.

Our moon orbits our planet alone, day after day, while the moons of other planets have much more in the way of company.

And only recently have we truly understood just how much more.

That’s because in the last few weeks, a team of astronomers from Taiwan, Canada, France, and the US had their discovery of 107 new moons officially recognized by the International Astronomical Union, with their observations of 21 other moons confirming their suspected presence.

What’s more, every one of these moons was orbiting Saturn.

With the use of the Canada France Hawaii Telescope, the team spent two years between 2019 to 2021 observing the skies around Saturn.

In these first two years of study, the team detected 62 moons, vastly increasing our previous estimations of Saturn’s skies.

Then in 2023, they spent another three months monitoring the skies, with the entirely unprecedented number of moons quickly surpassing the 95 that orbit Jupiter (the second-most mooned planet). They were also able to categorize a high number of previously unidentified objects, as Academia Sincia’s Dr. Edward Ashton explained in a statement:

“With the knowledge that these were probably moons, and that there were likely even more waiting to be discovered, we revisited the same sky fields for three consecutive months in 2023. Sure enough, we found 128 new moons. Based on our projections, I don’t think Jupiter will ever catch up.”

However, as the team note, their observations were thorough, using the most up-to-date technology, meaning that it’s likely that all of Saturn’s moons have been detected – for now at least.

And that caveat is because of the process that the team describe as causing Saturn’s incredible number of moons.

Many of these moons are small, which made them difficult to classify previously.

Their irregular size though, is for good reason, as the University of British Colombia’s Dr. Brett Gladman continued:

“These moons are a few kilometers in size and are likely all fragments of a smaller number of originally captured moons that were broken apart by violent collisions, either with other Saturnian moons or with passing comets.”

As the researchers explain, many of these moons are concentrated into one subgroup, indicating the site of the collision.

So while the count is at a grand total of 274 for now, don’t expect that number to remain stable into the future, as new, even smaller moons could be produced.

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