An international team of astronomers has discovered three previously completely unknown moons in our solar system: two more moons orbiting Neptune and another orbiting Uranus, the International Astronomical Union announced recently.
Distant, tiny moons have been spotted using powerful ground-based telescopes in Hawaii and Chile.
“The three newly discovered moons are the faintest ever found around these two ice giant planets using ground-based telescopes,” he explained in a statement. Scott S. Sheppard, astronomer del Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington.
“Special image processing was necessary to reveal such matte objects,” the expert added.
“Using this time-consuming observational technique on some of the world’s largest telescopes has made it possible to obtain deeper images than those obtained in previous observations near Uranus and Neptune,” the report said.
At the latest count, Neptune has 16 known moons and Uranus has 28.
Two new moons of Neptune
The detected moons orbiting Neptune have important differences in brightness and visibility. The brightest one, provisionally named S/2002 N5, measures about 23 kilometers and takes almost 9 years to orbit the “ice giant”.
Meanwhile, the faintest natural satellite, tentatively named S/2021 N1, is about 14 kilometers across and has the longest known orbit so far: it takes 27 years to complete a revolution around Neptune, the icy planet farthest from the Sun.
Both months will be named after the 50 Nereid sea goddesses from Greek mythology.
Uranus New Moon
With an estimated diameter of only 8 kilometers, the new moon orbiting Uranus is probably the smallest of the planet’s moons.
It takes 680 days to orbit the planet and has been tentatively named S/2023 U1, but is likely to be named after a character from Shakespeare’s play.
Possible discovery of several months
According to a statement by the Carnegie Institution for Science, the moons of all these countries have “distant, eccentric, and inclined orbits that suggest they were captured by the gravity of these planets during or shortly after Uranus and Neptune formed from the ring of dust and debris that initially surrounded our Sun.
Moons like those recently discovered could help astronomers better understand the history of the formation of our Solar System and the motions of other planets.
Given the new findings, future cutting-edge technologies could help better visualize dim celestial bodies: “We suspect there may be many more small moons” that have yet to be discovered, he said.
JU (ap, Carniege Science, Science Alert)
