All articles tagged with #minor planet center
Saturn's official confirmed-moon total rose from 146 to 285 within about a year after the IAU and Minor Planet Center recognised 128 new moons in March 2025 and 11 more in March 2026, a shift driven by deeper surveys and orbit-confirmation work; the 285 figure reflects objects with established Saturn-centric orbits, not a complete census, and older textbooks can be outdated on this count.
Saturn’s count of confirmed moons jumped from about 83 in the early 2020s to 285 by 2026 due to deeper, stacked observations that reveal many tiny, distant moons. The surge reflects detection capabilities and survey methods rather than new moons forming, with most new bodies being irregular, captured objects often in clusters from ancient collisions. Jupiter has about 100 confirmed moons, but Saturn now leads; hundreds more candidates remain to be confirmed, and the total will likely keep rising as surveys improve.
Astronomers report four new moons around Jupiter and 11 around Saturn, bringing totals to 101 and 285 for the planets and lifting the solar system’s known moon count to 442. The tiny satellites (~3 km across) have wide, faint orbits and were discovered with large telescopes (Magellan–Baade, Subaru, CFHT) by teams led by Scott Sheppard, David Tholen, and Edward Ashton.