This year, astronomers discovered more than 100 previously unknown moons in our own solar system. There may be many more yet to be discovered, and cataloguing them could help us better understand how planets form.
In March,聽 at Academia Sinica in Taiwan and his colleagues discovered 128 moons around Saturn, bringing the planet鈥檚 total to 274. The team gathered hours鈥� worth of images from the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope in Hawaii and stacked them on top of each other to spot objects that are otherwise too dim to see.
Ashton鈥檚 team now has the right to name the new moons, although Saturn鈥檚 moons are so numerous that many are no longer given informal names.
Advertisement
In August, a small and dim new moon was found in orbit around Uranus, bringing the planet鈥檚 total to 29. at Southwest Research Institute in Colorado and her colleagues made the discovery using 10 long-exposure infrared images taken by NASA鈥檚 James Webb Space Telescope.
The team remains tight-lipped on potential names for the moon, so it still has the provisional name S/2025 U1. In time, it will probably be named along the same lines as 27 of Uranus鈥檚 moons, which take a character鈥檚 name from one of Shakespeare鈥檚 plays. This convention dates back to the discovery of the planet鈥檚 first two moons, Titania and Oberon, in 1787.
at the University of Kent, UK, says there are likely to be many more moons to be discovered in our solar system, particularly around Neptune and Uranus, although the largest ones have probably already been mapped.
鈥淓verybody always likes to find new moons and everybody always likes to think about what they鈥檙e going to call them,鈥� he says. 鈥淚t鈥檚 an exciting moment. It鈥檚 a bit of a legacy.鈥�
The more we catalogue and measure our local moons, the more we can find out about how they are created and use that information to update our models of planet formation, says Mason.
鈥淲hy are there so many? What is it that triggered [planets] to make 40, 50, 60 of such varying shapes and sizes? 鈥㏕hat鈥檚 why they鈥檙e exciting,鈥� he says. 鈥淚t鈥檚 not just stamp collecting. It really is 鈥榳ow鈥�. Really surprisingly, the whole planet-formation process is not as well as understood as we think.鈥�
