Hubble spots Uranus' moons, rings

Baltimore Sun via San Francisco Chronicle ^ | December 23, 2005 | Frank D. Roylance

[neverdem]

Telescope confirms likelihood of lunar collisions in 500,000 years

Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope say they have discovered two tiny new moons and two faint new rings spinning around the planet Uranus. The finds bring the current tallies for the remote blue world to more than two dozen moons and 13 rings.

The scientists said Hubble images have also confirmed instabilities in the Uranian system that could eventually lead to lunar collisions.

"The destruction and accumulation of moons and rings is very exciting," said Jack Lissauer of the NASA Ames Research Center at Moffett Field in Mountain View, a principal investigator on the project. "It's showing how this system is very rapidly evolving and showing that the processes which led to the formation of the planets (are) still ongoing today."

Following scientific tradition, the discoverers named the two new moons after Shakespearean characters. One is Mab, the fairy queen in "A Midsummer Night's Dream." The other is Cupid, the Roman god of love, who appears in one of the bard's lesser-known plays, "Timon of Athens."

Since many of Uranus' other moons were named for the likes of Juliet, Portia, Desdemona and Bianca, "we liked the idea of tiny Cupid orbiting among Shakespeare's greatest lovers," said the new moons' co-discoverer, Mark Showalter of the SETI Institute in Mountain View.

Uranus is the third-largest planet and the seventh from the sun. About 32,000 miles in diameter, it orbits 1.78 billion miles from the solar system's center, between the orbits of Saturn and Neptune.

It was discovered in 1781 by William Herschel, who named it Georgium Sidus (Georgian Planet) after Britain's King George III. The name Uranus, after an early Greek god of the heavens, didn't come into routine use until 1850.

The planet's five largest moons were discovered by Herschel and...

[longshadow]

Seventh planet placemarker!

[ALOHA RONNIE]

.

Good to know, EGD.

Merry Christmas

http://www.lzxray.com/Ronnie3.jpg

.

[dalereed]

Does Ur annus actually pass visable gas in ring form?

[JoJo Gunn]

Christmas is for kids, ya know.

[strategofr]

"That's all junk science. Uranus has an insignificant effect on the Earth. Jupiter has far more, it's closer and 50 times as massive, and even that effect is minimal."

Read about Jupiter's effect on some elecrical field or particles around the earth years ago.

[hosepipe]

Are moons around Uranus called Dingleoids..?

[j_tull]

Isn't this the planet whose spin axis lies in (as opposed to the more conventional perpendicular to) the ecliptic? I remember reading that this was once offered as evidence that Uranus is a planet captured by Sol's gravity, rather than spun from Sol's mass as the rest supposedly were.

[airborne]

Merry Christmas, friend!

[festus]

Ordinarily I love a good rings around uranus thread but not when its sourced from the san francisco chronicle.

[CROSSHIGHWAYMAN]

We needed a good "rings around Uranus" thread for those of us who are alone on Christmas Eve! :)

A cause to see the doctor first thing on Monday morning in San Francisco.

[Irish_Thatcherite]

If that is so, the planet should be orbiting inward to the sun, our moon is orbiting away from us, because (allegedly) it separated from Earth after colossal impact.

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

***We needed a good "rings around Uranus" thread for those of us who are alone on Christmas Eve! :)***

Are you sure those are not hemeroids around uranus?

[beaver fever]

No it's the Chlorine. It always leaves a faint ring of copper oxide.

Which is why I always rinse Myanus, as apposed to Uranus, with pure spring water or grain alcohol.

"I do not avoid women Mandrake, but I do deny them my essence."

[engrpat]

There has to be a song in there somewhere.......hmmmmm...have to work it.

[Darkwolf377]

"Shoot, a guy could have a pretty good weekend in..." San Francisco?

[martin_fierro]

Hubble spots Uranus' moons, rings

Meanwhile, in related news...

[ElkGroveDan]

Yes Uranus has an unusual orientation to it's axis of rotation. It needn't have been captured from outside the solar system though. Things were highly chaotic in the early days of solar system formation. A massive impact with a planetary object could have knocked its axis to its present position. There is definitely some odd behavior in the systems of Uranus and Neptune, including moons with retrograde motion. This is all most likely a sign of one or more large body encounters. It has even been proposed that Neptune and Uranus may have swapped relative orbital positions in the distant past.

[dalereed]

""Shoot, a guy could have a pretty good weekend in..." San Francisco?"

Maybe with Urannus but not mine!

[beaver fever]

Guard your essence.

Be ever vigilant.

[martin_fierro]

"The destruction and accumulation of moons and rings is very exciting," said Jack Lissauer of the NASA Ames Research Center at Moffett Field in Mountain View, a principal investigator on the project. "It's showing how this system is very rapidly evolving and showing that the processes which led to the formation of the planets (are) still ongoing today."

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