SCIENTISTS have discovered three never-before-seen celestial bodies circling Neptune and Uranus.
The objects are all moons and they were found using a special imaging technique.
One of the new moons was found orbiting around Uranus.
The blue-green planet already has 27 confirmed moons and the new addition is the first found for the planet in 20 years.
Another two new moons were spotted circling Neptune.
That planet already has 14 confirmed moons including one called Triton that’s almost the same size as our own and has active volcanoes.
One of the new Neptune moons is being hailed as the faintest ever found by ground-based telescopes.
The International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center recently announced the new discoveries.
“The three newly discovered moons are the faintest ever found around these two ice giant planets using ground-based telescopes,” said Carnegie Science’s Scott S. Sheppard.
“It took special image processing to reveal such faint objects.”
The new Uranus moon has provisionally been called S/2023 U1.
It’s thought to be the smallest moon that orbits the planet.
Eventually, S/2023 U1 will be given a Shakespearean name as is tradition when naming Uranian moons.
Sheppard discovered S/2023 U1 in November last year when using telescopes at Carnegie Science’s Las Campanas Observatory in Chile.
In December 2023, he made follow-up observations to confirm the discovery.
He used the same Magellan Telescope to discover one of the new Neptune moons.
A team including David Tholen of the University of Hawaii, Chad Trujillo of Northern Arizona University, and Patryk Sofia Lykawa of Kindai University, helped Sheppard confirm the second Neptune moon.
Both of these objects were first spotted in 2021 but not confirmed as new moons for the planet.
The brightest of the Neptunian moons has been called S/2002 N5 for now and is about 23 kilometers wide.
S/2021 N1 is the name of the second smaller new moon which is 14 kilometers wide.
Eventually, both moons will be named after one of the 50 Nereid sea goddesses in Greek mythology, as is tradition.
“Once S/2002 N5’s orbit around Neptune was determined using the 2021, 2022, and 2023 observations, it was traced back to an object that was spotted near Neptune in 2003 but lost before it could be confirmed as orbiting the planet,” Sheppard said.
The scientists used several time-intensive exposure imaging techniques to make the moon discoveries.
“Because the moons move in just a few minutes relative to the background stars and galaxies, single long exposures are not ideal for capturing deep images of moving objects,” Sheppard explained.
“By layering these multiple exposures together, stars and galaxies appear with trails behind them, and objects in motion similar to the host planet will be seen as point sources, bringing the moons out from behind the background noise in the images.”
It’s hoped finding new moons will teach us more about the history of our Solar System.
