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New Uranus Moons and Rings Discovered
Patrick Furlong writes "CNN reports that the Hubble Space Telescope has discovered two new moons and two new rings around Uranus. The moons had been imaged by Voyager 2 in 1986 but were not recognized as moons at the time." More from MSNBC, and the official Hubble Site. From the CNN article: "The Hubble images also confirmed the existence of another moon, Perdita, which was first identified in the Voyager 2 pictures but had eluded telescopes ever since. Many moons of Uranus are named after characters in Shakespeare, and these new moons follow suit. Mab is named for Queen Mab, who is the subject of a famous speech by the character Mercutio in 'Romeo and Juliet.'"
Rings around Uranus.
Leela: "I don't get it."
Professor: "I'm sorry, Fry, but astronomers renamed Uranus in 2620 to end that stupid joke once and for all."
Fry: "Oh. What's it called now?"
Professor: "Urectum. Here, let me locate it for you."
Fry: "Hehe, no, no, I think I'll just smell around a bit over here."
- Just my $0.02, take with a grain of salt, your mileage may vary.
At this point, the question seems to be, do gas giants ever not have rings? They seem to be celestial vacuum cleaners, attracting all sorts of debris. It's a good thing too, as it probably kept the orbital bombardment of Earth to a minimum.
Boil and Pimple.
Thank you, I'll be here all night!
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How that deserved a troll mod i have no idea, maybe we need a -1 unfunny, but troll ain't the substitute.
"I may be full of crap about this game, and I may be wrong, and that's fine." -Jack Thompson
Somebody forgot to wipe again.
Are they gaseous rings?
Man, when I submitted the story, I included another line in the submission that said something to the effect of "let the obligatory jokes about "rings around Uranus" begin!", but they seem to have cut it out. Damn!
So, tell me again why they're getting rid of the Hubble telescope?
William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Act I, Scene iv, lines 49-103 (Sparknote analysis)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Heh, "rings" around... oh screw it, this is too easy. We need originality in our comedy. All your base are belong to us.
The last time Uranus was in the news I got quite a kick out of watching TV news anchors squirm as they talked about Your Anus.
Rings around Uranus... Moons...
This all sounds like a Goatse moment if I've ever heard of one
Mustn't click the wrong link...
It is only fitting that Ur anus has Moons
I just hope they've got a suitable replacement...
Just imagine the fun they must have in the office - "Hey, I just found an anomaly around Uranus!", "Really? What? ... Doh, you got me! Again."
I would like to know how this Uranus name came about? Was the guy who made the name thinking something dirty? :)
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Im pretty sure this brings the list to 23?
* Cordelia - 1986
* Ophelia - 1986
* Bianca - 1986
* Cressida - 1986
* Desdemona - 1986
* Juliet - 1986
* Portia - 1986
* Rosalind - 1986
* Belinda - 1986
* Puck - 1986
* Titania - 1787
* Oberon - 1787
* Ariel - 1851
* Miranda - 1948
* Umbriel - ?
* Caliban
* Sycorax
* Prospero
* Setebos
* Stephano
* Perditta - 1986
* Mab - 2005
* Cupid - 2005
Thats a heck of alot of moons!
Why did they name this new moon after the dog in 101 Dalmatians? They're just opening themselves up to a lawsuit from Disney.
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But he's scientifically accurate.
Oh well anyway, I think it's pretty neat that after having peered into the darkest depths of space, Hubble can still find interesting things to look at here in our own backyard! You'd think the telescope would have demonstrated its merits enough to not have to constantly exist under threat of having its funding cut and it being deorbited...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I have the feeling again when reading the article that the accent is on how Hubble can help scientist make discoveries, in order to show that Hubble is more usefull than often thought, and that thus we have to "save" it. Maybe just a feeling tho..
You just got troll'd!
I for one welcome our sure-to-come gross space joke overlords....
Table-ized A.I.
What size were these hemroids?
Hemorrhoids (hemroids)
The Hubble must have a pretty powerful flash to light the outer planets up so well.
Cress, cress, lovely lovely cress
Uranus, moons and gas giants!
I know I'll get modded offtopic, but: Q) What's the difference between miazole and urazole? A) The size of the ring.
And I thank you.
Why did this get modded offtopic while the 100x lame jokes get modded up?
they're still discovering moons around it.
Remember kids, with great power comes great opportunity to abuse that power
The Earth's ring corresponds to Case I in Figure 1, a circular ring with a gap at the location of the planet. However, the Earth's low mass means that it traps relatively few particles; the ring represents a density enhancement of only a few percent. This effect would scarcely appear in an image of the solar system seen from afar.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
...and toilet paper have in common? They both circle Uranus wiping out Klingons.
Why does Uranis have things floathing around it? Are they, like, white flies? I SMELL RACISM AFOOT!
i rock you.
Quote from the CNN article: "No one thought this region of Uranus was very interesting."
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At first, I thought that Slashdot was a full 30 hours behind fark.
But then I discovered that fark is actually two and a half years behind slashdot.
Don't be ridiculous. Everybody knows Uranus only has one ring. A brown one.
It was because I was 2/3rds elf. No, no, it was because I discovered the Karma Chameleon. (Yeah, bad joke, I know...)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
"The multitude of rings of space junk launched by humans is stupid. That which cannot be retrieved for space museum purposes should be swept up and removed, before it becomes impossible to get into space at all."
Putting weight into a stable orbit is expensive. Let's take the Athena II launch vehicle as an example. To get 1,896 kilograms to low earth orbit it costs about $25,000,000. Which works out to approximately $13,000/kg. You want to de-orbit the payload, the final motor stage, and any other random detritus necessary to get up to orbit (like, for instance, any leftover propellant in a liquid system)? That takes weight, over 10 kg worth without a doubt. And weight is money.
If your payload is a communications satellite, then that kind of parasitic weight reduces the lifetime of the satellite and the number of transmitters it can carry. The companies that are putting things up in orbit aren't in it to be good citizens. They're in it to make a profit, which isn't necessarily easy in the space industry. Space is a common resource, and the potential negative impact of having more space junk to the companies building, launching, or operating these satellites is tiny compared to the cost of putting that parasitic weight on there. It's the tragedy of the commons (google it.)
Besides, space isn't empty. Anything in orbit is constantly experiencing collisions with the solar wind and random gaseous atoms. As it slows down, it gets closer and closer to the atmosphere, eventually de-orbiting on its own. Remember the US space station?
Rings & moons around Uranus... there's got to be a joke in there somewhere.
Am I the only one who thinks this is funny?
It's a hand twinkler, you dumbass! And I got a bag of whoopass for you!
given that it had been imaged by Voyager 2 but had eluded telescopses since then. I believe "Perdita" means "Lost" in Latin...
But not half as much as I love Uranus!
Seriously though, does ANYONE not LOVE Uranus jokes? Here it it, a massive planet many times larger than ours, and at this point in our space exploration infancy all it's good for is absolutely hilarious ass jokes. DAMN I love Uranus.
Regular Meta Moderators are not more likely to get mod points.
I wonder if the lawyers have contacted NASA yet about the name of that new ring. I hope they name the next moon negativland.
"Our interests are to see if we can't scale it up to something more exciting," he said.
Does our technology really get better? Or are these rings NEW? Are they some kind of weapon system that is slowly being assembled to strike the earth? I hear helicopters outside... yep--they're black
Sorry, I just really wanted to steal that one crapflooder's line, and it works here. Trolls = helpful for once? What's the world come to?
was high so i read the headline as:
Now your anus moons and stays uncovered
and i looked back, but luckily it wasnt lol
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I guess we should never have stories about Uranus in the frontpage.
So, Uranus is a gas giant? Makes sense, I suppose..
'See, I took a picture of Uranus; it's got brown rings around it'
on sphincter failed!
Known by all /.ers for seti@home, it was the SETI Institute that made the discovery in cooperation with NASA.
How big is it?
They just discovered 2 new moons circling around it.
As technoloy gets better, we are discovering more and more moons around the planets in our solar system. But, I don't think a good definition of what constitutes a "moon" is out there - after all, we are now capable of detecting small rocks, etc. orbiting around bodies and depending on how small you define a moon to be, there are essentially an infinite number of moons around every planet (just like there are essentially an infinite number of "planets" orbiting the sun. Witness the recent controversy around Pluto - is it a planet? Just a big asteroid? And what about the object circling around Pluto - is that big enough to be truely called a moon?
and sounds kinda kinky
Chewbacon
The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.