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It wouldn’t be your fault if you imagined that we know a lot about our solar system because the James Webb Space Telescope peers into the depths of space. But that’s wrong. The International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center announced that scientists have discovered the first new moons on Uranus in more than 20 years, along with two new moons on Neptune.
“The three newly discovered moons are the faintest ever discovered around these two icy giant planets using ground-based telescopes. Revealing such faint objects required special image processing,” Carnegie Science’s Scott S. Shepherd explained in a press statement.
With the latest additions, Uranus now has a total of 28 moons. The newest one is only about 8 kilometers long, making it probably the smallest satellite on Earth. It took 680 days to orbit the planet and was named S/2023 U1. Like all of Uranus’ outer moons, it is named after characters from Shakespeare’s plays.
Shepard first discovered S/2023 U1 on November 4 last year using the Magellan Telescope at Carnegie Science’s Las Campanas Observatory in Chile. He then conducted a follow-up observation at the same facility a month later in December. He worked with Marina Brozovic and Bob Jacobson of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory to conduct months of observations to detect possible lunar orbits.
They were able to find new members of Uranus’ moon collection in older images taken in 2021 and images taken with the Subaru telescope in Hawaii. Shepard also worked with the Magellan Telescope to find the brighter of his two newly discovered Neptune moons. Shepard also sued the Magellan telescope to find the brighter of Neptune’s two new moons.
He then teamed up with David Thoren of the University of Hawaii, Chad Trujillo of Northern Arizona University, and Patrick Sophia Raikawa of Kindai University to discover another new Neptune moon. This was a very dark object. It was discovered in September 2021 using the Subaru Telescope.
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