Saturn receives 128 moons, gives it more than other planets

Another 128 Moon has been discovered to revolve around Saturn, bringing up to 274 planets – our solar system has more than all other planets in the surroundings. But as progress in binoculars technology allows us to present the objects of small planets, astronomers have to face a problem: how small can the moon be just before a rock?

Edward Ashton Taipei, in the academia synica in Taiwan, and his colleagues found new moon with Canada-France-Havai telescope, which revealed dozens that have developed the first astronomers. They took hours of the images of Saturn, adjusting them to the movement of the planet through the sky and piled them to the top of each other to reveal the objects that would be too slow to see otherwise.

All new moon are between 2 to 4 kilometers in diameter and hundreds of crores or billions of years ago have been formed in a confrontation between big moon.

“These are small rocks that are floating in space, so some people cannot get this much achievement,” says Ashton. “But I think it is important to have a list of all items in the solar system.”

Despite the wealth of the data collected by his team, these latest moon still appears only as “fuzzy bats”, says Ashton. There are more powerful telescopes that can potentially solve the moon in more detail, Although many have small areas, meaning that many more images have to be taken, they say.

The newly discovered moon is recognized by the International Astronomical Union (IAU), and Ashton and his team Now they will get the right to name. Ashton, who is Canadian, says that he has approached a representative of indigenous people of Canada for suggestions, but is also reducing the idea of ​​some types of public naming competition.

Can there be more moon? Scientists have rapidly spent decades to scan the area around Saturn with powerful telescopes, which have paid in recent years. In 2019, 20 new moon was found, and Ashton and his colleagues already had Discovered 62 In 2023, apart from 128, he met the most recently. Ultimately, it is likely that further discoveries will require progress in binoculars technology, Ashton says, who believe that there are thousands of moon easily in the orbit around Saturn, even the small, rocky debris found in the planet rings.

Mike Alexanderson In the Minor Planet Center, which logs planetary bodies for IAU, says that our solar system is still likely to have many more moon because improvement in binoculars allows them to see small objects. He says that the decision has to be decided what happens and is not counted as the moon.

“I know that IAU decided that, the possibility of being present due to the number of Moon is not going to give priority to naming anything smaller than 1 km. Alexanderson says, but it is not as they do not consider it as a moon.” They probably only give names if a spacecraft goes to see it. “

He suggested that the cutoff between a moon and what is just a rock particle that makes part of the ring of a planet, perhaps going to occur somewhere between 1 kilometer and 1 meter diameter. “Finally, this will probably not my decision, it will be IAU, which will make something cutoff that would be more or less controversial – such as cut for a planet or not. Alexanders’ says,” It is likely to be relatively arbitrary.

Elizabeth Day London at Imperial College says, one day, there may be commercial reasons for the solar system having an exact map. ,We want to remove resources from asteroids and moons in the solar system, so there can be a great understanding of what is important for it, “Dey says.