Astronomers continue to discover small moons orbiting the giant planets of the Solar System. Fifteen more new moons were recently discovered.
Growth in the number of known moons
Many new moons have been discovered around Jupiter and Saturn, bringing the total number of moons to 101 and 285, respectively.
These new discoveries also bring the total number of known moons orbiting planets and dwarf planets in the Solar System to 442—and that’s not counting the numerous small moons accompanying various asteroids or small objects in the Kuiper Belt.
The newly discovered moons—four for Jupiter and 11 for Saturn—were announced by the Minor Planet Center, the central repository for astronomical discoveries of asteroids, comets, centaurs, and, indeed, moons.
None of the newly discovered moons are particularly large; their average diameter is about 1.9 miles (3 kilometers). They have very wide orbits, much wider than those of the large moons of Jupiter and Saturn, and are extremely faint, with magnitudes ranging from 25 to 27. (By comparison, our moon has a magnitude of -12.6.) This places them well beyond the reach of amateur telescopes.
“Space hunters” for moons
They were only detected thanks to intensive observations using some of our largest ground-based telescopes. Four new moons of Jupiter were discovered by astronomers Scott Sheppard of the Carnegie Institution for Science and David Tholen of the University of Hawaii, using the 6.5-meter Magellan-Baade Telescope at the Las Campanas Observatory in Chile and the 8-meter Subaru Telescope at the summit.
Meanwhile, 11 new moons of Saturn were discovered by a team led by Edward Ashton at the Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics of the Academia Sinica in Taiwan. They used the 3.5-meter Canada–France–Hawaii Telescope on Mauna Kea. This happened after Ashton led the team that discovered 128 new moons of Saturn back in 2025.
Sheppard and Ashton, in particular, have been exceptionally productive discoverers of moons in the Solar System, with more than 200 to their credit, many of which were co-discoveries.
Total number of planetary moons
Although Jupiter lags significantly behind Saturn in terms of the number of moons, the Europa Clipper and Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) missions, which are currently heading for Jupiter, may restore the balance when they arrive in the Jovian system in the early 2030s.
To summarize, the current number of planetary moons is as follows: Earth has one moon, Mars has two, Jupiter has 101, Saturn has 285, Uranus has 28, Neptune has 16, while Venus and Mercury have none. As for dwarf planets: Pluto has five moons, Eris has one, Makemake has one, Haumea has two, and Ceres has none.
New moons of Jupiter were announced in the Minor Planet Electronic Circulars MPEC 2026-F09, F10, F11, and F12, while 11 new moons of Saturn were announced in MPEC 2026-F14.
According to www.space.com
