Which of the gas giants planets has 12 new moons discovered between 2021 and 2022?

Astronomers have discovered 12 additional moons orbiting Jupiter. That means Jupiter now has a total of 92 moons, more than any other planet in our solar system.

The new moons were recently added to a list kept by the internationally recognized Minor Planet Center.

Scott Sheppard, an astronomer at the Carnegie Institution of Science, one of the team that made the latest discoveries. He told The Associated Press (AP) that the new moons were found using telescopes in Hawaii and Chile in 2021 and 2022. The first sightings were confirmed by additional observations.

Jupiter's newly discovered moons have yet to be named. Sheppard said only half of them are big enough - at least 1 mile or so - to warrant a name. Scientists have hypothesized that they could be the remnants of three once-larger parent bodies that separated after getting into an accident with asteroids, comets, or other objects.

Many of these moons have a retrograde orbit, meaning they orbit in the opposite direction to the inner moons. This suggests the fact that Jupiter probably captures these moons.

According to "Sky & Telescope" magazine, more such orbits are expected to be published soon, but the dozen new ones already bring the list of Jupiter's moons to 92, well ahead of Saturn's 83 confirmed moons. All the newly-discovered moons are small and far away from the planet, taking more than 340 days to orbit it.