By Stacy Palen

I long ago stopped keeping track of the number of moons around Saturn and Jupiter. It often feels like there is a contest going on among astronomers—who can find the most moons around “their” planet! In early October, a report hit the news of 20 new moons discovered around Saturn, many of them in retrograde orbits.

This brings the number of moons around Saturn to 82. The number around Jupiter? Only 79. Neener-neener, Jupiter devotees!

Seriously though, if you are now discussing moons, planets, or planetary formation, this is a timely discovery to talk about with students. Or if you are about to start talking about dark matter, it may be a good time to remind students about Keplerian orbits and Newton’s version of Kepler’s Third Law.

But wait! There’s more!

These moons are not yet named, and Scott Sheppard has decided to have a contest to name them all.

Here are the general rules from the Carnegie Science website:

https://carnegiescience.edu/NameSaturnsMoons

• Two of the newly discovered prograde moons fit into a group of outer moons with inclinations of about 46 degrees called the Inuit group. All name submissions for this group must be giants from Inuit mythology.
• Seventeen of the newly discovered moons are retrograde moons in the Norse group. All name submissions for this group must be giants from Norse mythology.
• One of the newly discovered moons orbits in the prograde direction and has an inclination near 36 degrees, which is similar to those in the Gallic group, although it is much farther away from Saturn than any other prograde moons. It must be named after a giant from Gallic mythology.

Full details are available on the website along with a link to a list of names already used and a little video that describes the contest.

It would be great fun to make a class project or competition (even for college students) to choose a name to submit as a group. It’s the kind of experience that students remember for a long time. Submissions are due via Twitter by December 6.