With the recent discovery of 62 new moons, the Lord of the Rings regains its position at the top of the podium for planets with the most natural satellites, reclaiming the spot it had to concede to Jupiter a few months ago. The discovery was announced by an international group led by the Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the Academia Sinica in Taiwan.

Saturn takes back the crown stolen by Jupiter just a few months ago: 62 new moons have been identified around the planet, bringing the total number to 145, surpassing the other giant of the Solar System, which remains at 92 [recently increased to 95, note].

The discovery was announced by the international group led by the Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the Academia Sinica in Taiwan, shedding light on the planet's past. The new group of satellites likely formed from collisions between moons that occurred in the recent past, approximately a hundred million years ago. Furthermore, the study also demonstrates the effectiveness of the technique used, which allowed the identification of objects with a diameter of only 2.5 kilometers.

Locating satellites around Jupiter and Saturn is challenging due to their brightness, which surpasses anything else in their vicinity. Moreover, simply detecting a moon next to its planet is not enough to confirm its presence. The object needs to be tracked, ideally through multiple orbits, so that its path can be analyzed to determine its stability.

To achieve this, the researchers led by Edward Ashton relied on the same method used for Uranus and Neptune. Images are taken sequentially to follow the moon at the same speed at which it moves, and then superimposed to amplify the faint signals. For this purpose, the study authors used the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope located at the Mauna Kea Observatory.

"Monitoring Saturn's moons reminded me of the children's game where you connect the dots," said Ashton. "We had to connect the various appearances of these bodies, but it felt like having a hundred different games on the same page, without knowing which pattern each dot belonged to."


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