This moon was first seen in August 2001, but was soon lost in the glare of Uranus. It was rediscovered and confirmed only a few weeks ago - in August and September 2002
The new moon is marked with a circle and the big circle on the lower left is the planet Uranus
Astronomers have discovered a small moon orbiting the distant planet Uranus. According to them it is one of the faintest objects ever discovered in the solar system.
This moon was first seen in August 2001, but was soon lost in the glare of Uranus. It was rediscovered and confirmed only a few weeks ago - in August and September 2002. "The extremely small moon is similar in size to the small moons we thought Uranus has" says Dr. Jay Cavallars from the Canadian Research Center. Adding: "Now we have found one of them".
"We looked at the solar system with instruments capable of seeing small details that no one has seen until now," says Dr. Kovalars. To find the moon, the astronomers used the big telescope in Chile. The search technique was developed by Qualls and his colleague Brett Gladman of the University of British Columbia and so far it has led to the detection of many faint objects in the solar system.
The latest finding supports the theory that small moons are the remnants of a collision between a much larger object that orbited Uranus and a passing comet.
These irregular satellites that have no preferred orbit are almost certainly remnants of material from the surface of a larger moon. The new discovery, which is currently called S 2001 U1, is a moon with a diameter of a few tens of kilometers at most. It is so faint that even with the most sophisticated telescope it is difficult to follow. Irregular moons are those that orbit their parent planet in a non-circular or variable orbit relative to the planet's equator (where the major moons orbit it). They also tend to be very distant from the planet.
