Saturn's Moons Total 274 with 128 Newly Found Satellites

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Saturn now holds the crown as "moon king" with 128 newly discovered moons, bringing its total to 274 – nearly triple Jupiter's count of 95.

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Astronomers from Taiwan, Canada, USA, and France tracked these moons between 2019-2023 using a "shift and stack" imaging technique at Hawaii's Mauna Kea observatory.

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These aren't your typical moons – they're small, potato-shaped "irregular moons" only a few kilometers across, orbiting far from Saturn at distances up to 18 million miles.

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Lead researcher Dr. Edward Ashton claims Jupiter "will never catch up" in the cosmic moon race that Saturn officially won when the International Astronomical Union confirmed the discovery.

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Most new moons appear to be fragments from cosmic collisions, with 47 belonging to the "Mundilfari subgroup" believed to have formed from a crash as recently as 100 million years ago.

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Scientists believe these moon clusters reveal how Saturn captured moderate-sized objects 4 billion years ago during planet formation, which later broke apart through violent space crashes.

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Though thousands more tiny moons might orbit Saturn, Dr. Ashton admits he's "a bit mooned out" and current technology has likely reached its detection limits for now.

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