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20 NEW Moons have been discovered by astronomers orbiting an alien world in our solar system.

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Twenty additional moons have been identified around Saturn, raising the total to 82. This surpasses the previous record holder, Jupiter, which has 79 moons.

One of the new moons has the most distant known orbit around Saturn, and their sizes are all around three miles (5 kilometers). Two of the moons orbit the planet in around two years, while the remaining 18 require more than three.

Seventeen of the newly discovered moons circle Saturn in the opposite direction of the planet’s other natural satellites. The orbits of the retrograde moons are comparable to those of Saturn’s other known moons. And based on their inclinations, astronomers assume that these moons previously belonged to a much bigger moon that split apart eons ago.

 

The moons were identified by a team led by Scott S. Sheppard of the Carnegie Institution for Science using the Subaru Telescope on Hawaii’s Mauna Kea.

By observing these tiny moons and their interactions with the major planets, astronomers can learn about the origin and evolution of the worlds in our solar system.

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