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Astronomers found a new moon orbiting Uranus, as well as two moons around Neptune. After hours of ground observations, the tiny satellites appeared as faint spots in the outer part of the solar system.
Using observatories in Chile and Hawaii, astronomer Scott Shepard of the Carnegie Institution for Science first observed a Uranian moon on November 4, 2023, and two previously unknown Neptunian moons in September 2021. “The three newly discovered moons are the faintest ever discovered. were found around these two icy giant planets using ground-based telescopes,” Shepard said in a statement, “Such blurry objects require special image processing to reveal them.”
Uranus’s new moon is the first to be discovered around the ice giant in more than 20 years and is likely the smallest of its 28 moons. The moon is only 5 miles wide (8 kilometers) and takes 680 days to complete one orbit around Uranus. Most of the moons of Uranus are named after Shakespearean characters (for example, Ophelia, Sycorax, Juliet, Desdemona, etc.). Although it is currently labeled as S/2023 U1, the moon will eventually be renamed to maintain tradition.
The brightest of the two Neptunian moons, S/2002 N5, is 14 miles wide (23 km) and takes about nine years to orbit the farthest known planet from the Sun. Shepard used the Magellan telescopes in Chile to confirm the orbit of S/2002 N5 in October 2021 and again in 2022 and November 2023, finding it to be an object first observed near Neptune in 2003 but was lost before its orbit could be confirmed. ,
Neptune’s faint new moon, S/2021 N1, is 8.6 miles wide (14 km) and takes 27 years to complete one orbit. As the faintest moon ever discovered using ground-based observations, according to Carnegie Science, S/2021 N1 was required by the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope and the Gemini Observatory’s 8-meter telescope to secure its orbit. Requires very primitive conditions.
Shepard, with the help of scientists from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the University of Hawaii, Northern Arizona University and Kindergarten University, captured five-minute exposures over a three- or four-hour period over several nights to confirm the discoveries.
“Since the moons move relative to the background stars and galaxies over a period of minutes, single long exposures are not ideal for capturing deep images of moving objects,” Shepard said. “By putting these multiple exposures together, stars and galaxies appear with trails behind them, and objects in motion similar to the host planet will be seen as point sources, making the moons pop out from behind the background noise in the images. will bring.”
The orbits of all three new moons are eccentric, distant, and inclined, suggesting that they were captured by the gravitational pull of Uranus and Neptune after they formed as ice giants.
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