{"id":29505,"date":"2025-08-24T08:54:31","date_gmt":"2025-08-24T03:09:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/?p=29505"},"modified":"2025-08-24T08:54:31","modified_gmt":"2025-08-24T03:09:31","slug":"astronomers-discover-hidden-moon-orbiting-uranus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/astronomers-discover-hidden-moon-orbiting-uranus\/","title":{"rendered":"Astronomers discover hidden moon orbiting Uranus"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>

-Ashley Strickland<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Astronomers using the powerful eye of the James Webb Space Telescope have spotted a previously unknown moon whirling around Uranus, according to NASA. The discovery boosts the number of moons known to be orbiting the ice giant to 29 \u2014 and there are likely more waiting to be found.<\/p>\n

The moon came to light through a series of 40-minute long-exposure images taken by Webb\u2019s Near-Infrared Camera on February 2.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a small moon but a significant discovery, which is something that even NASA\u2019s Voyager 2 spacecraft didn\u2019t see during its flyby nearly 40 years ago,\u201d said Maryame El Moutamid, a lead scientist in the Southwest Research Institute\u2019s Solar System Science and Exploration Division in Boulder, Colorado, in a statement.<\/p>\n

El Moutamid is the principal investigator of a Webb program dedicated to analyzing the structure and dynamics of the typically hidden rings and inner moons of Uranus.<\/p>\n

The glow of Uranus\u2019 rings and the moon\u2019s tiny size, measuring about 6 miles (10 kilometers) in diameter, are likely what obscured it from the view of Voyager 2, the only mission that has performed flybys of Uranus and Neptune, as well as telescopes such as Hubble that have observed the solar system\u2019s outer planets.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s possible that the moon and some of the material comprising Uranus\u2019 rings have a common origin, which could mean the rings and moon are fragments resulting from the same ancient event, El Moutamid said.<\/p>\n

The moon, temporarily named S\/2025 U1, could reveal how Uranus\u2019 rings are shaped, whether by gravity or an ancient event, to provide a window into the enigmatic rings\u2019 structure, stability and history, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe discovery raises questions about how many more small moons remain hidden around Uranus and how they interact with its rings,\u201d El Moutamid said.<\/p>\n

Finding a tiny moon<\/strong><\/p>\n

The discovery of moons around planets in our solar system is not a very common occurrence, but it does happen from time around giant planets like Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese planets have many moons, and some are so tiny and faint that we\u2019re still discovering them,\u201d El Moutamid said.<\/p>\n

The newly found moon is the 14th in a system of small moons orbiting Uranus \u2014 all of which orbit closer to the planet than its largest moons: Miranda, Ariel, Umbriel, Titania and Oberon.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s located about 35,000 miles (56,000 kilometers) from Uranus\u2019 center, orbiting the planet\u2019s equatorial plane between the orbits of Ophelia (which is just outside of Uranus\u2019 main ring system) and Bianca,\u201d El Moutamid said, referring to two other small moons circling the planet. \u201cIts nearly circular orbit suggests it may have formed near its current location.\u201d<\/p>\n

Spotting the moon was no easy task because it is tiny, dark and moves quickly, which made it nearly invisible against the background glow of Uranus\u2019 rings, El Moutamid said. The high resolution and sensitivity of Webb\u2019s Near-Infrared Camera was perfectly suited to find a faint, distant object, she said.<\/p>\n

Webb\u2019s ability to capture infrared light, invisible to the human eye, has also provided glimpses of Uranus\u2019 rings and moons, atmosphere and weather during earlier observations.<\/p>\n

\u201cIts detection highlights both the dynamic complexity of Uranus\u2019s system and the sharp eyes of modern astronomy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Uranus’ icy moon Miranda is seen in this image from Voyager 2 on January 24, 1986.
\nUranus’ icy moon Miranda is seen in this image from Voyager 2 on January 24, 1986. NASA\/JPL-Caltech
\nSo far, all of Uranus\u2019 moons have been named for characters from the works of William Shakespeare and Alexander Pope.<\/p>\n

The previously unknown moon doesn\u2019t have a literary name yet, and the International Astronomical Union, which assigns official names to celestial objects, will need to approve one.<\/p>\n

Part of the difficulty in determining just how many moons orbit Uranus is the proximity of these natural satellites to the planet and the bright glare of the planet itself, said Scott Sheppard, astronomer at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, DC. Sheppard was not involved in the new observations but helped discover a Uranus moon in 2024.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis new Uranus moon is a very exciting find since it is so close to Uranus and likely associated with the inner ring system,\u201d Sheppard said. \u201cThis discovery shows the power of the James Webb Space Telescope to be able to image deeper than we ever have before.\u201d<\/p>\n

A growing collection of satellites<\/strong><\/p>\n

No other planet has as many small inner moons as Uranus, said coprincipal investigator Matthew Tiscareno, a senior research scientist of solar system dynamics and planetary rings at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California. Astronomers don\u2019t quite know how the diminutive moons have avoided crashing together because they\u2019re so close to one another, but the satellites may act as shepherds for Uranus\u2019 narrow rings, according to NASA.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

-Ashley Strickland Astronomers using the powerful eye of the James Webb Space Telescope have spotted a previously unknown moon whirling around Uranus, according to NASA. The discovery boosts the number of moons known to be orbiting the ice giant to 29 \u2014 and there are likely more waiting to be found. The moon came to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29506,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29505"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29505"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29505\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29507,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29505\/revisions\/29507"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}