The James Webb Space Telescope has spotted a previously unrecorded tiny moon orbiting Uranus.
"It's a small moon but a significant discovery, which is something that even NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft didn't see during its flyby nearly 40 years ago," said Maryame El Moutamid, a lead scientist in the Southwest Research Institute's Solar System Science and Exploration Division in Boulder, Colorado, in a statement.
…
The glow of Uranus' rings and the moon's tiny size, measuring about 6 miles (10 kilometers) in diameter, are likely what obscured it from the view of Voyager 2, the only mission that has performed flybys of Uranus and Neptune, as well as telescopes such as Hubble that have observed the solar system's outer planets.
It's possible that the moon and some of the material comprising Uranus' rings have a common origin, which could mean the rings and moon are fragments resulting from the same ancient event, El Moutamid said.
CNN
Nothing like a good Uranus story.
Previously:
• Are people who study Uranus annoyed by jokes about Uranus?
• Uranus is leaking
• Neptune and Uranus more boring colors than most people thought
