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Saturn surpasses Jupiter to become new moon king

Saturn now has 82 moons – three more than Jupiter’s 79 moons – and each of the 20 newly-discovered Saturn moons is about five km in diameter.

A team led by Scott S. Sheppard from Carnegie Institute of Science found 20 new moons orbiting Saturn. Seventeen of them orbit the planet backward, or in a retrograde direction, meaning their movement is opposite of the planet’s rotation around its axis.

The other three moons orbit in the prograde — the same direction as Saturn rotates.

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Categories: Science Technology