Saturn Becomes Moon King

Saturn now has the most moons of any planet in our solar system, according to the International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center and reported on by Carnegie Science. Twenty new moons have been discovered and confirmed orbiting Saturn, bringing the ringed planet's total number of moons to 82. Jupiter was the planet with the most moons as of the late 1990s. The big red planet currently has 79 moons.

The study of how other moons orbit and interact with other planets provides enormous insights into how the physical systems in space work. Galileo’s discovery of Jupiter’s four largest moons bolstered his argument for the Copernican view of the solar system, which is the idea that Earth was not the center of the universe.

The new moons are each about three diameters in size, and 17 orbit Saturn in retrograde, meaning they spin the opposite direction of the planet. The moons were identified by a team out in Hawaii’s Mauna Kea lab, using the Subaru telescope.

Scientists are opening the naming of the moons to the general public, something they did with Jupiter’s new moon. Saturn was named after the Roman god of agriculture and time, fitting for the planet that is the slowest to orbit the Sun.