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OH yeah love ending my workday with a surprise National Geographic interview about the Saturn moons that I helped discover by accidentally pointing the CFHT telescope at Saturn. Definitely my most scientifically productive whoopsie ever.
128!!!! New!!! MOONS!!
Happy Moon Day!
@AkaSci@fosstodon.org@sundogplanets
What defines a moon?
Is there a minimum size limit or some other property?
Obviously, the small fragments that make up Saturn's rings don't count as moons.
Do we have orbital parameters for these new moons?
Names?
@AkaSci @sundogplanets Obi-wan defines what a moon is. 
@adamshostack Moon. Moon. Moon. Station. Moon.
@AkaSci the orbital parameters and provisional names are right there in the link. Search “Orbital elements” and immediately following that is each moon and its name starting with moon “S/2019 S 22”
@drbrain
Thanks! I should have scrolled down that page.
@AkaSci Paper here with some of them (I'm not a co-author, just an observer, whoopsie) https://arxiv.org/pdf/2503.07081
There's another paper coming soon, possibly tomorrow.
All led by Edward Ashton, a very talented postdoc at ASIAA!
@AkaSci And yeah, this is definitely going to push to some kind of Pluto situation where the IAU is going to have to define a moon!
@sundogplanets @AkaSci I vaguely recall that the reporting on Sputnik back in the late 50s said things like "Earth has a second moon now". But assuming we don't want to say that Saturn has billions of moons (in the rings) I guess there has to be a limit.