The Planetary Society Blog
By Emily Lakdawalla
Some confusion about the Uranian moon count
Jan. 16, 2006 | 09:18 PST | 17:18 UTC
I've gotten several emails lately asking me something to the effect of "when are you going to update the 'How Many Moons?' web page to reflect the discovery of the two new moons of Uranus?" The short answer is: it's already updated; the so-called "new moons" aren't that new.
Here's the story. Just before Christmas, there were a few press releases from NASA and the Space Telescope Science Institute announcing "Hubble Discovers New Rings and Moons Around Uranus." The story talked about how a long-term campaign by scientists Mark Showalter and Jack Lissauer had yielded the discoveries of moons and rings at Uranus. The campaign had been going on since before 2003. In fact, the "two new moons" that the press releases talked about were first discovered in 2003, and were already added to our "How Many Moons?" page then. The only thing that is brand-new about those two moons was their names; they were formerly known as S/2003 U1 and S/2003 U2, but have recently been formally named Cupid and Mab. So despite all the talk about "two new moons" for Uranus, they've already been added to the count; Uranus holds steady at 27 moons. Orbits of Uranus' rings and moonsUranus' rings and moons form a bullseye of orbital paths around the tilted planets. Two new rings, U1 and U2, were announced in December 2005. Credit: NASA |
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