A total of 128 new moons have been found orbiting Saturn, bringing the total to 274 moons on the planet.

According to a report with The Guardian, with the new moons found, Saturn now has twice as many as all other planets combined.

“Sure enough, we found 128 new moons,” Dr Edward Ashton, a postdoctoral fellow in the Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics at the Academia Sincia in Taiwan, was quoted by the report as saying.

“Based on our projections, I don’t think Jupiter will ever catch up,” he added.

Earlier, the same team of astronauts had identified 62 Saturnian moons using the Canada France Hawaii telescope.

As of February 5, 2024, Jupiter has a total of 95 moons.

According to the report, the new moons on Saturn have been formally recognised by the International Astronomical Union and have been assigned strings of numbers and letters.

Later, the moons would be given names based on Gallic, Norse and Canadian Inuit Gods.

The moons were identified using the “shift and stack” technique, in which astronomers acquire sequential images that trace the moon’s path across the sky and combine them to make the moon bright enough to detect, the report claimed.

All of the 128 new moons are “irregular moons”, potato-shaped objects that are just a few kilometres across, it stated.