new moons and rings discovered around Uranus

[cp28]

Saw it over on CNN, not on space.com yet.<br /><br />http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/space/12/22/uranus.hubble/index.html<br /><br />------------------<br />CNN) -- New images from the Hubble Space Telescope show the planet Uranus has two additional moons and two faint rings never observed before.<br /><br />The new moons, which were named Mab and Cupid, bring the total number of satellites orbiting Uranus to 27.<br /><br />Astronomer Mark Showalter of the SETI Institute and his colleagues were not looking for new moons or rings when they submitted a proposal to take deep exposures of the planet with Hubble's most advanced optical camera. Rather, they planned to study the 11 previously known rings and several moons embedded within them.<br /><br />Once they saw the new moons, they re-examined images that the Voyager 2 spacecraft took when it flew by Uranus in 1986. The two moons are clearly there, but no one recognized them at the time.<br /><br />"The discoveries all came from Hubble," Showalter said. "The Voyager results came because it's much easier to find something you are looking for."<br /><br />The Hubble images also confirmed the existence of another moon, Perdita, which was first identified in the Voyager 2 pictures but had eluded telescopes ever since.<br /><br />Many moons of Uranus are named after characters in Shakespeare, and these new moons follow suit. Mab is named for Queen Mab, who is the subject of a famous speech by the character Mercutio in "Romeo and Juliet." Cupid is best known as the Roman god of love, but he also turns up as a character in the lesser-known play "Timon of Athens." The name Perdita comes from the play "A Winter's Tale."<br /><br />All three moons are very small. Perdita is the largest, measuring about 16 miles across.<br /><br />The moons are orbiting in the same vicinity as the newly discovered rings -- outside the previously known ring system but closer t

 

[telfrow]

Photo caption from: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10574903/<br /><br /><i>Three pictures illustrate how the new rings were found: (A) The reflected glare of Uranus itself is blotted out, revealing the planet's rings and moons. (B) Further processing enabled the astronomers to identify two extremely faint moons, Perdita and Cupid, highlighted here by colored circles. (C) Still more enhancements revealed two previously unseen rings, labeled R1 and R2.</i> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <strong><font color="#3366ff">Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will to strive, to seek, to find and not to yeild.</font> - <font color="#3366ff"><em>Tennyson</em></font></strong> </div>

 

[bonzelite]

we need a Cassini type of probe to go out to Uranus and do a ring and moon tour.

 

[bad_drawing]

Agreed! <br /><br />Hmmm I wonder how tricky the insertion would be for an equatorial orbit.

 

[chew_on_this]

Uranus insertion? *giggle*

 

[telfrow]

<b>Keck telescope captures faint new ring around Uranus</b><br /><br /><i>Astronomers have made the first ground-based observations of one of two new rings discovered recently around the planet Uranus by the Hubble Space Telescope and announced today.</i><br /><br />http://www.physorg.com/news9314.html <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <strong><font color="#3366ff">Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will to strive, to seek, to find and not to yeild.</font> - <font color="#3366ff"><em>Tennyson</em></font></strong> </div>

 

[telfrow]

Hubble Photos from: http://www.physorg.com/news9318.html <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <strong><font color="#3366ff">Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will to strive, to seek, to find and not to yeild.</font> - <font color="#3366ff"><em>Tennyson</em></font></strong> </div>

 

[bonzelite]

a blue Saturn. <br /><br />now i'm interested in a planet by planet ring comparison mission. as detailed as what Cassini is capturing. <br /><br />i wonder, too, how transparent the upper atmosphere of Uranus is. would sunrise and sunset on Uranus, were you able to be suspended in it's sky, look like Earth? or is the air too murky, as on Titan?

 

[astrophoto]

What's replenishing the rings around Uranus? I am actively interested now with the discovery of Enceladus's ice ejecta.<br /><br />And no jokes about Klingons around Uranus...

 

[bonzelite]

maybe they are not being replenished. if they are, Saturn seems to be the point of departure for ring modeling and origins. but this is why i want a comparative reconaissance mission between ring systems of differing planets: maybe what works for Saturn fails for Uranus. perhaps the rings systems are not quite in existence under the same processes. they may be as similar as they are different. <br /><br />i'd like to know how old the rings of Uranus are compared to Saturn. from only visual and intuitive guessing, i'd say Saturn's rings are younger. or maybe Saturn's rings, too, are being replenished and Uranus' rings are not. <br />

 

[jmilsom]

Yes. Just imagine if we could send a Cassini to Uranus and a Cassini to Neptune. Imagine how much knowledge comparative studies between the three gas giant systems would generate. <br /><br />Of course the New Horizons mission about to blast off for Pluto, has a sibling mission in the works, New Horizons II, which would do a flyby of Uranus. Maybe with the right support this mission could leave an orbitor in the Uranian system as it goes through. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[odysseus145]

The article from space.com says this about replenishment of the rings:<br /><br />"Since dust in such an orbit is expected to be depleted by spiraling away, the rings must be continually replenished with fresh material. Showalter and collaborator Jack Lissauer of the NASA Ames Research Center propose that the outermost ring is replenished by a 12-mile-wide companion satellite, named Mab, which they first saw in 2003 using Hubble. Meteoroid impacts continually blast dust off the surface of Mab, and the dust then spreads out into a ring around Uranus."<br /><br />link <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[astrophoto]

Interesting. Not that I would ever want such a close call and likelihood of disaster, but it would be neat to have our own ring. Perhaps something to hit the Moon enough to launch a dust ring but not perturb it's orbit. That'd be beautiful but apparently hasn't happened in recorded history -- at least to point of being visible to the naked eye.

 

[unlearningthemistakes]

http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/space/SpaceRepublish_1537062.htm <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p>pain is inevitable</p><p>suffering is optional </p> </div>

 

[thalion]

In the current fiscal climate, I doubt NH II will ever get off the ground. <img src="/images/icons/frown.gif" />

 

[the_masked_squiggy]

First: Hey, isn't this the first time in quite a while SETI's been able to put their names to something useful?<br /><br />Second: What I found interesting is that the moons are in chaotic orbits and are expected to eventually take each other out. Maybe we should keep track of them now that they've been found.

 

[CalliArcale]

That is so cool. <img src="/images/icons/wink.gif" /> Ring systems fascinate me -- they're why I find the gas giants so intriguing. It's exciting to learn that Uranus' system has so much left to show us. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><font color="#666699"><em>"People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly . . . timey wimey . . . stuff."</em>  -- The Tenth Doctor, "Blink"</font></p> </div>

 

[aerogi]

Isn't it possible to just make another cassini spacecraft? All the engineering has been done, so you don't need to make those fixed costs again? Off course getting into an orbit around Uranus may be quite difficult, but still, the Cassini spacecraft has proven to be an incredible mission so far. Another thing might be the lining up of the planets itself off course. Anyone can tell me when a spacecraft should be launched to get to these two planets as fast as possible?

 

[bonzelite]

good point. the r&d has already been done. they'd update the craft with newer equipment. and they could launch multiple super-cassini's to uranus, neptune, a modified one to titan for exclusive work there, maybe one to venus and mercury. they could have super-cassini's around every planet, and the sun, doing science. <br /><br />then there is the armada of robot probes that are crab-sized and number in the hundreds. you could send these out in capsules on each cassini, deploying like a huygens type of piggyback lander. upon landing, the protective casing opens up as dozens of super fast land roving crabs or spider-bots disperse and journey for hundreds of kms in myriad directions. <br /><br />we could put a cassini around every large icy moon. this would cost trillions of dollars and take fifty years or more to execute.

 

[Aetius]

My second favorite planet, just behind Earth.<br /><br />What a fascinating system of worlds in its own way, just too bad it got stuck with a doofy name.<br /><br />Hypercronus, Georgium Sidus, and just plain Herschel all sounded better than Uranus. *Sigh* <img src="/images/icons/smile.gif" /><br /><br />Thanks for the article!