A Newly Found World Blurs the Boundary Between Planet and Moon
The additions are tiny irregular satellites a few kilometres wide, found through years of telescope imaging and follow-up tracking.
- The International Astronomical Union confirmed 128 new irregular moons around Saturn on March 11, 2025, officially pushing the planet's total from 146 to 274 moons.
- Edward Ashton and colleagues monitored Saturn between 2019 and 2023, using a 'shift-and-stack' technique that combines multiple images to strengthen signals from faint objects.
- Unlike famous moons like Titan or Enceladus, these 128 additions are small irregular satellites only a few kilometers across, occupying distant, eccentric orbits likely as fragments of larger bodies.
- By March 2026, the IAU Minor Planet Center confirmed 11 additional moons, raising Saturn's known total to 285 while Jupiter's known total rose to 101.
- The March 2025 announcement underscored that Saturn's inventory remains incomplete; as astronomical instruments improve, scientists expect to detect more small candidate companions, suggesting the count will continue to evolve.
25 Articles
25 Articles
The boundaries of our knowledge of what is possible or not in the Universe have just jumped through the air, like pieces of a puzzle that no longer fit. Back there are discoveries that left us breathless, such as the gigantic exoplanet GJ 504b wrapped in amazing salt clouds, or the recent direct observation of four white dwarfs hidden in binary systems just 65 light years from Earth.When scientists thought they finally had the objects that are '…
A group of scientists reported in a study published on Wednesday the discovery of an star that may or may not be considered the first moon found outside the Solar System. The team of astronomers led by Kevin Hoy, of the European Southern Observatory (ESO), in Chile, describes an object that does not resemble our Moon or the moons of the planets around the Sun.
Have we found the first exomoon … around a brown dwarf?
Have astronomers found the first exomoon? We think of moons as objects that orbit planets. So what do we call this object, which orbits a brown dwarf? The post Have we found the first exomoon … around a brown dwarf? first appeared on EarthSky.
ESO researchers report in Nature: They have discovered a satellite of a brown dwarf, which in turn orbits a star. Whether one can speak of a moon is controversial.
Super Weird: It's as Big as Jupiter and It Can Be the First Moon Discovered Outside the Solar System
The discovery can mark a historic moment in astronomy. The moon now found does not even orbit a planet, but revolves around a brown dwarf. Researchers point out that, as exotic as it may be, this finding is truly unique and represents an important scientific advance.
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