New Uranus, Neptune moons to get names from Shakespeare plays, greek mythology

After a long gap of 20 years, a new moon has been discovered around Uranus and two around Neptune increasing the lunar family of the solar system.

The newly discovered moons will now be named after characters from fabled plays by William Shakespeare and Greek mythology.

These are some of the faintest moons to have been discovered around the two giants at the edge of the Solar System. The International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center has announced the discovery.

With the new discovery, Uranus has 28 moons orbiting it. At only 8 kilometers, it is probably the smallest of Uranus’ moons and orbits the planet once every 680 days.

The Uranian moon has been named S/2023 U1, which will eventually be named after a character from a Shakespeare play, in keeping with the naming conventions for outer Uranian satellites.

According to Carnegie Science, S/2023 U1 was first spotted on November 4, 2023, by Sheppard using the Magellan telescopes at Carnegie Science’s Las Campanas Observatory in Chile. Sheppard made follow-up observations at Magellan a month later in December.

He then managed to spot the moon in older photos that he had taken in 2021 at Magellan, as well as at the Subaru telescope in Hawaii.

The team then used the Magellan Telescope to find the brighter of the two newfound Neptunian moons.

Subsequent observations conducted on the Magellan telescopes in October 2021 and repeated in 2022 and November 2023 confirmed the presence of the brighter Neptunian moon in orbit around Neptune.

Detecting the fainter moon required a specialised observing conditions at the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope and the Gemini Observatory’s 8-meter telescope. The team utilised data from the 2021 observations to predict telescope positions in 2022 and 2023 to locate the extremely faint object.

The brighter Neptune moon, provisionally named S/2002 N5, measures approximately 23 kilometers and completes an orbit around the ice giant in nearly 9 years.

The fainter Neptune moon, provisionally designated S/2021 N1, has a size of about 14 kilometers and an orbit lasting almost 27 years.

Both moons will eventually be named based on the 50 Nereid sea goddesses from Greek mythology.