Quantitatively upstaging Earth’s guest appearance of a second moon this fall, a recent study found that Saturn has 128 new moons in its orbit.
Astronomers confirmed this discovery on March 11, officially bringing Saturn’s total amount of moons to 274 – according to NASA.
Not that it was ever a competition, but if it was, this discovery means Saturn nearly doubled its already-winning odds. The second planet with the most amount of moons is Jupiter, with 95 recorded in its orbit.
A report by the New York Times said these moons were possibly formed by “cosmic smashups” that sent debris into Saturn’s orbit about 100 million years ago.
“Many of these moons are rocks only a few miles across – small compared with our moon, which is 2,159 miles across,” explained the report. “But as long as they have trackable orbits around their parent body, the scientists who catalog objects in the solar system consider them to be moons.”
A team of astronomers from Taiwan, Canada, France and the U.S. first discovered Saturn’s new batch of moons in 2023, according to Science.com. The moons were ratified in March 2025 by the International Astronomical Union.
The NYTimes explained how, through using the Canada France Hawaii Telescope at Mauna Kea in Hawaii, this team “observed patches of space near Saturn, and over time this allowed them to track the motion of previously unknown moons.”
NYTimes spoke with a member of the team, Edward Ashton, who explained that they needed to prove the objects were in orbit around the planet.
The report noted that Ashton, who will have naming rights for these objects, was also responsible for finding 62 new moons of Saturn two years ago.
