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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.'"
Jupiter has thin rings, despite being bombarded a great deal more than Uranus or Saturn, though you'd need to talk to an expert in planetary physics if you have much of a hope of finding out why.
Of the rocky planets, Earth is the only one I know of that has a (natural) ring. It is extremely thin and usually ignored, but does exist. My guess, based on the theory that the moon is a result of a collision between an original Earth and some planet of comparable size, is that the ring is debris that was launched by the collision but did not congeal into the moon as it now is.
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.
Going back to the discoveries - I think it less of a surprise that the discoveries have occured (just think of how many new rings and moons have been discovered around Jupiter and Saturn) than it is a surprise that people haven't found anything before now for Uranus. Its rotation is so strange and its properties so bizare that I would have thought that planetary astronomers would have concentrated extra effort onto it. Discoveries do not come from studying the mundane, they come from studying the exceptions and understanding why and how they have become such.
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)
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.
i thought jupiter's rings were caused by io's volcanic activity. if i remember they were constantly falling into the planet to be replaced by debris from fresh eruptions on the moon.
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!
Perdita is named after a character from Shakespeare, just like all the moons of Uranus.
MisterBuggie wrote:
AOL
And, it would seem we're in good company. NASA hasn't heard of one, either.
Cheers,
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
Nope! Uranus was discovered by William Herschel.
Uranus was an early Greek God of the Sky, Son of Gaia. The word predates the english use of "Your Anus" by a couple thousand years.
94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
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)
"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?
Known by all /.ers for seti@home, it was the SETI Institute that made the discovery in cooperation with NASA.