Why Saturn's moons have been so hard to find

Why Saturn's moons have been so hard to find Getty Images Enceladus is one of Saturn's larger moons and is thought to have an ocean beneath its icy crust Astronomers recently announced that they had discovered 62 new moons around the ringed planet Saturn and another has just been added to the list. In May this year, astronomers announced that they had found 62 new moons orbiting one of the Solar System's gas giants, the ringed planet Saturn. NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute Some of Saturn's moons are thought to have formed from material in the planet's rings colliding and clumping together Mimas is among the smaller moons in the Solar System. An ancient cataclysm might have spun these tiny satellites into the dark "If you look at the four bright moons of Jupiter, the Galilean satellites, those are called regular moons, and all the giant planets have regular moons," says Brett Gladman, a Canadian astronomer at the University of British Columbia and one of Ashton's colleagues involved in the recent discoveries around Saturn. Scientists have also discovered much smaller "moonlets" orbiting in Saturn's rings – although some can be as large as a football stadium – and are thought to be the remains of larger moons that were smashed to pieces in the past.