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.'"

Comments

They took out my comment

[pfurlong]

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!

Re:Gas giants and rings

[TrumpetPower!]

jd wrote:

[I]t 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.

A cop walking his beat noticed a man, obviously drunk, searching the ground underneath a streetlight.

``Excuse me, sir, but what're you looking for?'' asked the cop.

``My...my keys,'' the drunk stammered. ``I d-dropped 'em.''

The cop paused for a moment, shining his flashlight around the area, which was quite obviously devoid of keys.

``Are you sure you dropped your keys here, sir?'' the cop asked.

``No...I dropped 'em back in the *hic* alley.'' replied the drunk.

``Well, why on Earth are you looking for your keys here, if you dropped them over there?'' demanded the cop.

Triumphantly, the drunk answers, ``Be...cause this is where the light is!''

Cheers,

b&

Re:Oh crap....

[rts008]

No matter how often it happens, I still get an uncomfortable feeling every time I hear Goetse has ben /.ed- Please make the images stop- think of the children! Or in other words: "In soviet Russia, Goatse discovers Uranus!