The James Webb Space Telescope Has Found a New Moon Orbiting Uranus
The discovery was made thanks to images taken by the James Webb Space Telescope. A team out of the Southwest Research Institute noticed an unfamiliar object that appeared to be orbiting around Uranus. The images have been stitched together in a slideshow on YouTube that shows the moon, which orbits much closer around Uranus than its 13 other known moons.
"This object was spotted in a series of 10 40-minute long-exposure images captured by the Near-Infrared Camera," said lead scientist Maryame El Moutamid. "It's a small moon but a significant discovery, which is something even NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft didn't see during its flyby nearly 40 years ago."
In terms of size, this moon is indeed small at around six miles in diameter. For reference, Earth's moon is 2,159 miles in diameter and the largest moon in our solar system, Jupiter's Ganymede, is 3,270 miles. The moon also has a circular orbit, per the SwRI team, meaning that it likely formed in the same area where it currently orbits.
Uranus' 14th moon orbits closer to its rings than most of the other moons.
NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, M. El Moutamid (SwRI), M. Hedman (University of Idaho). Animation: J. DePasquale (STScI)
Better name TBA
Despite obtaining a 14th moon, which NASA is calling S/2025 U1, Uranus has a long way to go to compete with Jupiter and Saturn, which have 95 and 274 confirmed moons, respectively. However, Uranus is the king of tiny moons.
"No other planet has as many small inner moons as Uranus," said Matthew Tiscareno, research member of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California. Since S/2025 U1 is so much smaller than the known moons, Tiscareno posits that there may be even more small moons drifting around that have yet to be discovered.
NASA does note that this research hasn't been peer-reviewed yet, so the for-now clunkily named S/2025 U1 may be yet dismissed as a non-moon. However, if it is confirmed, the moon will receive a (better, we hope) name from the International Astronomical Union and become completely official.
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