This animation, created by combining a series of still photos, shows how the image of a satellite moves across the stationary starfield, revealing it to be an object within our solar system. The discovery gives Saturn a total of 22 known moons, surpassing the 21 orbiting Uranus.
Nothing is known about the four new moons except for their brightness.
Observed from Earth-bound observatories, the moons appear as faint dots of light moving around the planet. Members of the team, including former Cornell University researcher Brett Gladman and Cornell professors of astronomy Joseph Burns and Philip Nicholson, warn that the findings are still preliminary. They also note that they might have discovered several other objects that could be Saturnian moons. The discovery of the four new moons was made using a technique developed by Gladman while he was a student at Cornell. Gladman, who now works for the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in France, obtained his Ph.D. at Cornell.