General Discussions

[kruddler]

What set me off was there was an MSN article on the newsfeed today that said Saturn had gone past Jupiter as the planet with the most satellites.

https://www.sciencealert.com/over-60-unk...ing-saturn

I just thought it was funny that 50 years ago we only had about a dozen

The kicker is this....

Interestingly enough, the criteria for defining a moon, or natural satellite, are fairly broad. There's no shape or mass or diameter or composition requirement; the object in question just needs to have a stable orbit around another, larger body that isn't a star

Given both planets have their own set of rings, which, obviously, orbit the moon, the number is more likely going to increase by several orders of magnitude.
Until they update what a moon is in terms of size, the numbers will explode. Similarly, thats what they did to poor pluto when the decided to define what a planet wise, Pluto didn't fit the bill.