In 2023, astronomers looked at Saturn again and confirmed the presence of an even greater number of small hidden moons, which have now been officially recognized by the International Astronomical Union. Unlike the large and well-known moons of Saturn, such as Titan and Enceladus, these new "irregular" moons are small, taking the form of potato shapes and measuring just a few kilometers in diameter.
To detect them, scientists used a specialized technique called "shift and combine." They made small images at different moments in time, tracking the movement of the moons across the sky and combining the images, which made them sufficiently bright for detection. Interestingly, the newly discovered moons are grouped, suggesting that they were once part of larger moons that were destroyed in the aftermath of collisions with comets or other cosmic objects.
Saturn officially reclaimed the title of "Moon King" of the solar system after astronomers discovered 128 new moons, orbiting around the planet. This increased the total number of moons of Saturn to 274, leaving it much closer to its biggest competitor, Jupiter, far behind with only 95 confirmed moons as of February 2024.
The discovery was made by a team of astronomers using the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope, which has already discovered 62 of Saturn's moons. These fragments, now orbiting around Saturn at various inclinations, could have formed in the last 100 million years.
"They are, presumably, all fragments of a smaller number of moons that were destroyed as a result of violent collisions, either with other Saturn moons or with passing comets," said Professor Brett Gladman, an astronomer from the University of British Columbia.
