奇速英语

Saturn (土星) is famous for the beautiful rings around it. Now, it’s getting attention for being even more amazing. Scientists have discovered 128 new moons around Saturn, bringing the planet’s total to 274. A moon is any naturally formed object that moves around a planet. Moons come in different shapes and sizes.

Scientists discovered the moons with a powerful telescope (望远镜), which is used to study stars and planets in great detail. Scientists took many photos of areas in space and piled them on top of each other to make the moons appear bright enough to discover.

Most of Saturn’s new moons are small objects, just one or two miles wide—quite different to Earth’s Moon, which is a 2,159-mile-wide ball. These space rocks are in unusual orbits (轨道) too. They go around Saturn in the opposite direction to its own movement. At between 6.5 million and 18 million miles away from the ringed planet, the newly discovered moons are also further away than Saturn’s biggest moon, Titan.

Why does Saturn have so many moons while Earth only has one? According to scientists, several billion years ago, the giant planet’s gravity attracted some rocks and ice. Over time, some of them crashed against each other, breaking into smaller pieces or coming together to create many small moons.

The new moons were first discovered in 2023 by a team of scientists led by Edward Ashton, and were recently confirmed by the International Astronomical Union (IAU). Saturn now is the planet with the most moons—Jupiter is not far behind with 95. However, Dr Ashton believes this might be the limit for moon discovery. “I don’t think Jupiter will ever catch up,” he said. “With present technology, I don’t think we can do better than what has already been done,” he added.