Astronomers believe that many groups of Saturn’s moons are the result of a collision between the moons. Brett Gladman, one of the researchers responsible for finding the new moons, is a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of British Columbia, Canada, and comments that with more modern telescopes, it is possible to find evidence of an orbiting moon. around Saturn, and was blown up about 100 million years ago.
The newly discovered moons of Saturn look nothing like Earth’s moon. This is because their shape is irregular and their diameter is no more than a kilometer or two. In addition, the satellites orbit farther from the planet, between 9.6 and 30 million km, than the larger ones.
“These moons are very important for understanding some of the big questions about the solar system,” says Bonnie Buratti of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California and deputy project scientist on the upcoming Europa Clipper mission to Jupiter.
However, the irregular moons we see now may be just the beginning. “We estimate there are potentially thousands” around Saturn, Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune, says Ashton.
In the list recently updated by NASA, Saturn is at the top with 145 moons, followed by Jupiter with 95, Uranus with 27, Neptune with 14, Pluto with 5, Mars with 2, and Earth with 1. And finally, Venus and Mercury , which has no moon.
This content was originally published Astronomers discovered 62 new moons on Saturn. The figure exceeds that of Jupiter On site CNN Brazil.
source: CNN Brazil
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