Jupiter once again ceded the throne of the planet with the most moons revolving in its orbit, to Saturn. The discovery of 62 new moons brought the ringed planet firmly back to the fore, with a total of 145 officially recognized moons.<\/p>\n
By alternating and stacking images of the satellites taken over several years, a team led by astronomer Edward Ashton of the Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics in Taiwan found moons of Saturn that were only 2.5 kilometers in diameter, according to Science Alert, reports Al-Rai daily.<\/p>\n
These newly discovered small moons allow astronomers to piece together a complete picture of Saturn’s past. “It’s actually somewhat challenging to locate small moons orbiting Jupiter and Saturn,” Ashton added.<\/p>\n
These two planets are the largest in the solar system, and they are very bright in the sky, especially from our earthly perspective, as they are always in the sunlight.<\/p>\n
“This means that they pretty much neutralize anything around them, which makes detecting small, faint objects particularly difficult.”<\/p>\n
Interestingly, the criteria for defining a moon are fairly broad, with no shape, mass, diameter, or composition requirements, it just needs a stable orbit around a larger body that isn’t a star.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Jupiter once again ceded the throne of the planet with the most moons revolving in its orbit, to Saturn. The discovery of 62 new moons brought the ringed planet firmly back to the fore, with a total of 145 officially recognized moons. By alternating and stacking images of the satellites taken over several years, a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":129202,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-129201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-technology"],"yoast_head":"\n