“Saturnus Ruled the Moons: Astronomers Discover 62 New Moons Orbiting the Ringed Planet”

Kuatbaca.com-Astronomers discover 62 new moons orbiting Planet Saturnus. With this latest discovery, this ringed planet is ordained as the ‘king of the moon’.

Previously, Saturn has 83 months which is where it has been recognized by International Astronomical Union. But with the astronomer’s latest discovery, Saturn’s total natural satellites are 145 months.

Saturn moon the newly discovered are classified as ‘irregular moons’. This term refers to objects that are affected by planetary gravity and eventually orbit in large, flat, or elliptical paths that are more inclined than typical lunar orbits.

Thus currently, Saturn has 121 irregular moons along with its 24 regular ones. Irregular moons tend to cluster depending on the tilt of their orbits.

The dozens of months thanks to observations made by a team led by Edward Ashton, a post doctoral fellowship Of Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics.

Edward and other astronomers identified objects orbiting Saturn using a technique called shift and stack to find smaller, dimmer moons around the planet.

Technique shift and stack it uses a series of images that shift at the same speed as the moon’s motion around Saturn. This method seems effective in finding dozens of new moons of Saturn.

“Keeping track of these months reminds me of child’s play dot-to-dotbecause we had to gradually relate the various sightings of these moons over the last few weeks,” said Ashton quoted from Space, Sunday (14/5/2023).

Shift and stack is not a new technique, having been used to search for moons on Neptune and Uranus. It’s just that it just yielded results when searching moon of Saturn.

The data used by the team in finding Saturn’s new moon was collected between 2019 and 2021 over a three-hour span by the Canada France Hawaii Telescope on Maunakea, Hawaii. Using the telescope allows astronomers to detect Saturn’s moon with a diameter of 2.5 km.

Although several moons have been visible since 2019, it will take more than extra observations to confirm that it is a moon, not an asteroid making a short trip to Saturn.

In February, 12 new ones were found with a total of 92 moons orbiting Jupiter, but with the latest findings at this time Saturn now the planet with the most number of moons in the Solar System.

Even so, the largest number of moons may be replaced in the future as astronomers’ observations continue.

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