SATURN IS THE NEW MOON KING
Scott S. Sheppard who led a team has found 20 new moons
orbiting Saturn. This brings the ringed planet's total number of moons to 82,
surpassing Jupiter, which has 79 moons. The discovery was announced on Monday 7th
October by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) Minor Planet Center.
The diameter of each of the newly discovered moons is about
five kilometres or three miles. Seventeen of them orbit the planet in a
retrograde direction, which means their movement is opposite of the planet's
rotation around its axis. The other three moons orbit in the prograde the same
direction as the planet rotates.
"Studying the
orbits of these moons can reveal their origins, as well as information about
the conditions surrounding Saturn at the time of its formation,"
(Sheppard, 2019).
There are two prograde moons that are closer to the planet
and take about two years to travel once. The more-distant retrograde moons and
one of the prograde moons each take more than three years to travel once Saturn
orbit.
The outer moons of Saturn appear to be grouped into three
different clusters and orbiting around the planet. Two of the prograde moons
fit into a group of outer moons with inclinations of about 46.00 degrees known
as the Inuit group.
"This kind of grouping of outer moons is also seen
around Jupiter, indicating violent collisions occurred between moons in the
Saturnian system or with outside objects such as passing asteroids or
comets," (Sheppard, 2019).
If a significant amount of gas or dust particles were present
when a larger moon broke apart and created these clusters of a smaller moon fragment, there would have been strong frictional interactions between the
smaller moons and the gas and dust particles, causing them to spiral into the
planet. Get more information about planets on UK writers help
"In the Solar System's youth, the Sun was surrounded by
a rotating disk of gas and dust from which the planets were born. It is
believed that a similar gas-and-dust disk surrounded Saturn during its the formation," Sheppard said. "The fact that these newly discovered
moons were able to continue orbiting Saturn after their parent moons broke
apart indicates that these collisions occurred after the planet-formation the process was mostly complete and the disks were no longer a factor."
These new moons were discovered using the “Subaru telescope”
atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii. The observing team included Sheppard, David Jewitt of
UCLA, and Jan Kleyna of the University of Hawaii.
"Using some of the largest telescopes in the world, we
are now completing the inventory of small moons around the giant planets,"
(Scott Sheppard, 2019). "They play a crucial role in helping us determine
how our Solar System's planets formed and evolved." (Scott Sheppard, 2019)
Sheppard discovered 12 new moons orbiting Jupiter and
Carnegie hosted an online contest to name five of them.
"I was so thrilled with the amount of public engagement
over the Jupiter moon-naming contest that we've decided to do another one to
name these newly discovered Saturnian moons," (Sheppard, 2019). "This
time, the moons must be named after giants from Norse, Gallic, or Inuit
mythology."
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