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Laura Nicole Driessen, Postdoctoral Researcher in Radio Astronomy, University of Sydney

Saturn now has 274 moons – but exactly what makes something a moon remains unclear

Dione, one of Saturn's 274 moons, viewed with Saturn and its rings in the background. NASA / JPL / Space Science Institute

Earlier this week, Saturn gained a whopping 128 new official moons, as the International Astronomical Union recognised discoveries from a team of astronomers led by Edward Ashton at the Academia Sinica in Taiwan. The sixth planet from the Sun now has a grand total of 274 moons, the most of any planet in the Solar System.

The discovery has raised a lot of questions. How do you spot moons, and why hadn’t anybody seen these ones already? Doesn’t Jupiter have the most moons? What are they going to call all these moons? Are there more out there? And what exactly makes something a moon, anyway?

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