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New Moon System Around Uranus
An anonymous reader writes "Astronomers have discovered two of the smallest moons yet found around Uranus. The new moons, uncovered by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, are about 8 to 10 miles across (12 to 16 km) -- about the size of San Francisco. The two moons are so faint they eluded detection by the Voyager 2 spacecraft, which discovered 10 small satellites when it flew by the gas giant planet in 1986. The newly detected moons are orbiting even closer to the planet than the five major Uranian satellites, which are several hundred miles wide. The two new satellites are the first inner moons of Uranus discovered from an Earth-based telescope in more than 50 years. "It's a testament to how much our Earth-based instruments have improved in 20 plus years that we can now see such faint objects 1.7 billion miles (2.8 billion km) away," says Mark Showalter, a senior research associate at Stanford University. 'The inner swarm of 13 satellites is unlike any other system of planetary moons,' says co-investigator Jack Lissauer. 'The larger moons must be gravitationally perturbing the smaller moons. The region is so crowded that these moons could be gravitationally unstable. So, we are trying to understand how the moons can coexist with each other.'"
Just think, if they are admitting to having this sort of technology facing away from the planet, what do they have looking down on us? Really though, cudos the the Huble, since they got the glitches worked out that while ago it seems to be working great and finding new things. But just how is this going to impact my daily life? Is it going to help the space elevator get built by the time I am 45? 65? So my great grandkids can see it when they are 45? (I am 20 btw) Sure this is cool, but work on the things that impact us first dont spend billions on a crappy shuttle program that is 20 years old and has had 2 major disasters.
Yup last 4th of July, those wernt fireworks my friend. Them there perty lights in the skys was da hubble. The really neat thing is the way they managed to make it work after they got the remaining bits that made it through the landing.