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.'"

Comments

Re:Teenager detector

[Motherfucking Shit]

Seriously though, is it not possible to read an article about Uranus without seeing all those "uranus *lol* *giggle* *pffft!*" posts ?

Of course it's possible. I'm amazed at the discovery of this new moon system, and duly amazed that the two new moons evaded detection for so many years. I imagine it speaks to the quality of NASA's latest technologURANUS! lol *giggle* *pffft!*

OK, maybe it's not possible, but you have to admit, it's a bit funnier than all those jokes about NO CARRI^ath0