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Huge haul of 62 new moons gives Saturn the solar system record
Saturn has overtaken Jupiter as the planet with the most known moons in the solar system. Astronomers have announced a bumper crop of 62 new moons orbiting the ringed planet, pushing its total to well over 100.
We Earthlings are used to only having one moon (with the occasional second), but the average is much higher. Mars has two, and the gas and ice giants have dozens each. Jupiter usually leads the race, but Saturn has been known to overtake it from time to time. From late 2019, Saturn officially had 82 to Jupiter’s 79, but a few extra studies pushed Jupiter’s tally to 95 earlier this year.
Now, an international team of astronomers has handed the ringed planet the crown once again, with a huge haul of 62 new moons pushing it to a grand total of 145 – that’s 50 more than Jupiter. And before you run to comments to tell us that 82 + 62 = 144, one extra moon was found in 2021.
Anyway, the researchers were able to identify these new moons using a technique called “shift and stack,” which has been applied to Neptune and Uranus before but not Saturn. Essentially, a series of images are snapped of the planet and its surrounds. Each sequential image is shifted slightly then stacked, so that moons that are normally too faint to show up in individual images become visible.
After tracking objects of interest over several years, the team was able to confirm its crop of 62, bringing the number of Saturnian moons officially recognized by the International Astronomical Union to 145. All of these newcomers belong to a group called irregular moons, which orbit the planet at long distances, on stretched out and tilted paths.
With the sheer number of small moons in this group, the team hypothesizes that they’re fragments of a much larger moon that was torn apart in the recent past, astronomically speaking.
“As one pushes to the limit of modern telescopes, we are finding increasing evidence that a moderate-sized moon orbiting backwards around Saturn was blown apart something like 100 million years ago,” said Dr. Brett Gladman, an astronomer on the project.
Saturn isn’t expected to hold onto this record for long though. With the upcoming launch of new observatories like Vera Rubin and Nancy Grace Roman, it’s believed Jupiter’s total could swell by hundreds more.
注释：
saturn: n
表示" 土星"，如：Saturn is the planet sixth in order from the sun. 土星是依次离太阳的第六颗行星。
tally: n; v
表示" 得分；记录"，means "the act of counting; reciting numbers in ascending order;"，如：He added to his tally in the last minute. 他在比赛最后一分钟又得了分。
Neptune：n
表示"海王星"，如：The placement of Jupiter and Neptune form a Square aspect in your chart. 在你的命盘中，木星处在跟海王星相刑的情况上。
Uranus: n
表示" 天王星"，如：Uranus is only a tiny spot in the sky. 天王星只是天空中的一个极微小的点。
stack: v
表示" 堆积；堆放"，means "arrange in stacks"，如：Please stack the materials up here.请把材料堆在这里。
中文简要说明：
天文学家宣布，新发现62个土星的新卫星，使土星的卫星总数突破100颗，再次夺回「太阳系卫星之王」的地位。
我们地球人习惯天上只有一个月亮，但其他行星的卫星更多。火星有两个，气态巨行星(木星、土星)和冰巨行星(天王星、海王星)各有几十个。木星通常在比赛中处于领先地位，但众所周知，土星有时会超越它。从 2019 年底开始，土星正式拥有 82 个，而木星的 79 个，所以土星的太阳系卫星之王，地位保持了一段时间。
今年2月，负责搜集微型行星资料的小行星中心（MPC），帮木星找到12颗新卫星，使得木星的卫星总数来到92颗，再次成为最多卫星的行星。然而，才过3个月，土星又追了上来。
这一次新发现的土星卫星，达到62颗之多，使得土星卫星总数达到145颗，这比比木星多了50多颗。别急着评论区告诉我们「 82 + 62 = 144」，因为2021 年，又发现了一个新的土星卫星。
研究人员使用的是一种称为「移位与迭加」的图片分析技术，来识别这些新卫星，这种技术之前曾应用于海王星和天王星，但没有应用于土星。其原理很简单，就是拍摄一系列行星周围环境的照片，每张连续图都略微移动，然后迭加，这样太暗而无法出现卫星，就变得可以比对了。
研究团队追踪了好几年，因此确认了62颗新卫星，国际天文学联合会正式承认，土星卫星总数达到145 颗。所有这些新卫星的轨道都不规则。
鉴于这组小卫星的数量之多，研究小组假设，它们应该是被被撕裂的大卫星留下的碎片。
天文学家格拉德曼 (Brett Gladman) 博士说：「我们推测，大约在1亿年前，一颗中等大小的土星卫星被压碎了，这62个新卫星是一部分的碎片。」
不过，新的天文观察也会给木星超越的机会，人们相信，未来还会再发现木星的新卫星。
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