NASA's Webb telescope discovers a new Uranus moon
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NASA scientists on Tuesday announced the discovery of a 29th moon orbiting Uranus while using infrared detection in the James Webb Telescope in February. (Photo Credit: NASA | License Photo)
Aug. 19 (UPI) -- NASA scientists at the Southwest Research Institute discovered a 29th moon orbiting Uranus while using infrared detection through the James Webb Space Telescope.
The discovery was made on Feb. 2, but NASA officials did not announce the discovery until Tuesday in a news release.
"This object was spotted in a series of 10 40-minute long-exposure images captured by the Near-Infrared Camera," said Maryame El Moutamid, lead scientist at NASA's Solar System Science and Exploration Division in Boulder, Colo.
"It's a small moon but a significant discovery," El Moutamid said. "Even NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft didn't see [the moon] during its flyby nearly 40 years ago."
NASA scientists estimate the newly discovered moon is 6 miles in diameter, which made it nearly impossible for Voyager 2 or other telescopes to discover.
It's located about 35,000 miles from Uranus' center and has a nearly circular orbital pattern around the planet's equatorial plane.
Uranus has the most small inner moons of all the planets within the solar system, according to NASA.
"Their complex inter-relationships with the rings hint at a chaotic history that blurs the boundary between a ring system and a system of moons," said Matthew Tiscareno, of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif.
"The new moon is smaller and much fainter than the smallest of the previously known inner moons," he added, "making it likely that even more complexity remains to be discovered."
The newly discovered moon awaits an official name to be determined by the International Astronomical Union.
NASA scientists in May announced that four of Uranus' largest moons each likely contain an ocean layer of water between their respective cores and their icy surface crusts.
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