Saturn has 82 known moons – more than any other planet at the publication time of this article. Of these, twenty were discovered in the last year. Most are just a few miles across. But the larger ones are some of the most fascinating moons of the solar system.
Known for its stunning system of rings, Saturn is truly a gem of the solar system. Although Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune also have rings, only Saturn’s are easily visible from Earth and are an icon of astronomy. Yet these rings were unknown until the 1600s. For the first five and a half millennia, Saturn was simply the slowest of the five “wandering stars.” The invention of the telescope in 1608 paved the way for more advanced telescopes, eventually allowing astronomers to see Saturn in all its splendor.