MADRID, 20 (EUROPA PRESS)
NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has discovered a new moon orbiting Uranus, expanding the family of the planet's known satellites, the space agency reported. The discovery was made during an observation on February 2, 2025.
The Southwest Research Institute (SwRI)-led team has identified this previously unknown moon, explained Maryame El Moutamid, principal scientist for SwRI's Solar System Science and Exploration Division.
"This object was detected in a series of 10 40-minute long-exposure images captured by the Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam). It's a small moon, but a significant discovery, something that not even NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft detected during its flyby nearly 40 years ago," he noted.
NASA adds that it estimates this moon to be 10 kilometers in diameter and is believed to have a reflectivity similar to that of Uranus's other small satellites. Its tiny size likely made it invisible to Voyager 2 and other telescopes, the agency indicates.
Regarding this, one of the members of the SETI Institute research team, Matthew Tiscareno, stated that "no other planet has as many small inner moons as Uranus, and its complex interrelationships with the rings point to a chaotic history that blurs the line between a ring system and a moon system." "Furthermore, the new moon is smaller and much fainter than the smallest of the inner moons known so far, making it likely that even more complexity remains to be discovered," he emphasized.
In this sense, this moon is the fourteenth member of the intricate system of small moons orbiting the larger moons: Miranda, Ariel, Umbriel, Titania, and Oberon. All of these moons of Uranus are named after characters from Shakespeare and Alexander Pope, NASA notes. The name for this new moon must be approved by the International Astronomical Union (IAU), the authority responsible for assigning names and official designations to astronomical objects.
The newly discovered moon "is located about 56,000 kilometers from Uranus's center, orbiting the planet's equatorial plane between the orbits of Ophelia (which lies just outside Uranus's main ring system) and Bianca," El Moutamid continued. "Its nearly circular orbit suggests it may have formed near its current location."
Looking ahead, researchers say the discovery of this moon underscores how modern astronomy continues to build on the legacy of missions like Voyager 2, which flew by Uranus in 1986 and gave humanity "the first close-up look at this mysterious world." Now, nearly four decades later, the Webb Telescope is "pushing that frontier even further."
