Here's a visualization I made of the Saturn system with an option to highlight the newly discovered moons: https://typpo.github.io/spacekit/examples/saturn/index.html Besides the 20 new moons, I find it interesting that there are 8 "lost" moons. These are objects observed as far back as 2004 - but their current locations are unknown.
That visualization is awesome! Everyone try it. You can easily zoom in and our and rotate in any of the 3 axis. It's amazing to see how far away these 'new moons' are from being in the same plane as the older, larger moons.
Twenty New Moons Found Orbiting Saturn
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Re: Twenty New Moons Found Orbiting Saturn
#42I wish they would open up the naming of at least one moon to whatever the internet decides to come up with, rather than restricting it to the same old boring gods and goddesses convention. That moon would probably become one of the more popular celestial bodies in the solar system based on that alone.
Re: Twenty New Moons Found Orbiting Saturn
#43Re: Twenty New Moons Found Orbiting Saturn
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
Mostly because of conservation of angular momentum: the solar system formed while spinning, and that direction has been maintained. The cases where this is not true (for example, Uranus has its poles "facing the plane" instead of having them orthogonal to it) are likely due to past collisions with foreign bodies that caused the tilt to appear.
Are most of these moons from when the solar system formed?
Re: Twenty New Moons Found Orbiting Saturn
#45Re: Twenty New Moons Found Orbiting Saturn
#46Any notion of why the Earth has only one moon and other planets have hundreds?
The question is more “why does Earth have a big moon” than “why doesn't Earth have a slew of moons like a jovian planet.”
Re: Twenty New Moons Found Orbiting Saturn
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Earth is miniscule in comparison to the planets that have hundreds of moons. Those just have a stronger gravity field
What about Mars?
Re: Twenty New Moons Found Orbiting Saturn
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
Moons generally orbit on the same plane as their planet's orbit plane
Is this because polar orbits are unstable in some sense, or because pretty much everything already is in the planet's plane?
Polar orbits are "unstable" in a few senses, namely that even in an ideal setting orbital planes will precess around central masses that are lumpy rather than spherically symmetric; rotation of a lumpy central mass introduces further precessions. Nodal precession is pretty interesting, for example. One can concoct all sorts of odd orbital changes by perturbing the rotating central mass "under" a test object in stable orbit.
However, in the case of known solar system bodies, slowly shifting a satellite in near-polar orbit into a near-equatorial orbit conflicts with quite a lot of evidence; by the mid 1960s it was pretty safe to say that known inner moons maintain over very long timescales an almost constant orbital inclination with respect to the planet's equator, while outer moons maintain an almost constant orbital inclination with respect to the invariable plane of the solar system. Interesting exceptions are Triton and Earth's moon, both of which have significant inclinations to their planets. Precessions are primarily driven by the planet for the inner moons, and by the sun for the outer moons.
It's probably worth paying some close attention to Uranus and its known moons (and their formation and/or capture) when considering the various thoughts people have put into the thread. Most of the moons and rings have negligible inclination (i.e., they're coplanar with Uranus's equator), and Uranus's extreme axial tilt is intriguing. If the tilt is because of a giant collision, did the relevant moons and rings follow the planetary tilt? Or did they form in the highly-tilted equatorial plane (for some of the moons), or were they captured into the equatorial plane (for others) post-tilt?
Re: Twenty New Moons Found Orbiting Saturn
#49Isn't the term moon devalued too much by now? Isn't there terminology to classify these newly found 5km natural satelites differently from the massive moons like ours, Ganymede, Europa and so on? Something like dwarf moons or micromoons?
Re: Twenty New Moons Found Orbiting Saturn
#50A peeve I have would be to use a language of certainity ("has moons"): > This brings the ringed planet’s total number of moons to 82, surpassing Jupiter, which has 79 When it's clear we don't have the absolute truth. We need to be humble. It's clear then that Saturn has at least 82 moons. Or maybe not even that, taking account the "lost" moons mentioned in this discussion. Now we believe that Saturn has about 82 moon…