Astronomers Confirm Discovery of 128 New Moons Orbiting Saturn
The findings bring Saturn's total to 274 moons, solidifying its status as the planet with the most moons in the solar system.
- The discovery was made by an international team using the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope and confirmed by the International Astronomical Union on March 11, 2025.
- The 128 newly identified moons are irregular in shape, small in size, and likely fragments of larger moons shattered by collisions within the last 100 million years.
- Most of the new moons are located near the Mundilfari subgroup, suggesting a significant past collision in Saturn's moon system.
- The shift-and-stack technique was employed to detect these faint, distant objects by combining sequential images to enhance their visibility.
- With 274 moons, Saturn now has nearly twice as many moons as all other planets in the solar system combined, leaving Jupiter, with 95 moons, far behind.