Posted on 12/24/2005 7:02:26 PM PST by 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...
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Deep exposures of Uranus taken with the Hubble Space Telescope reveal two small moons and two faint rings. All orbit outside of Uranus's previously known (main) ring system, but interior to the large, classical moons. The outer new moon, U XXVI Mab, orbits at roughly twice the radius of the main rings and shares its orbit with a dust ring. The second moon, U XXVII Cupid, orbits just interior to the satellite Belinda. A second ring falls between the orbits of Portia and Rosalind, in a region with no known source bodies. Collectively, these constitute a densely packed, rapidly varying, and possibly unstable dynamical system.
We needed a good "rings around Uranus" thread for those of us who are alone on Christmas Eve! :)
I hate it when Uranus moons....
LOL yes we do!
Astonomy threads are always great, especially with pics. I have a scifi mindset--I read and write it--and those threads always make me happy after five threads about the dems or New York Times. The planets will be here long after every copy of the Times is dust.
You don't wash it. You just wash around it, right?
With a towel the size of Mars and lots of soap and hot water.
Before we examine the rings around Uranus, you really need to do something about those Klingons.
FWIW I'm not alone....five kids, wife and ...ahem... mother-in-law
The rings are descibed as 'faint' which means Uranus gets washed regularily.
I always thought it was an unfortunate name for a planet.
No wonder you're on here now... ;)
All I can think of is that guy on Ghostbusters, choking on that smoke. "That's a big Twinkie".
Faint? Darned flouridated water...
All I can think of is how Uranus threads have the magical ability to turn adults into children. :)
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It's interesting how a report published in a recent Amrican Media, Inc publication stated that the Planet Uranus' now closer proximity to us, relatively speaking, is what's putting unusual gravitational pressure on Earth's geological plates =
Tsunami-causing Earthquakes..?
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Zackly
Hubble better not be looking at my.....
Oh never mind...
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.
I just love playing Trivial Pursuit and get a planet question. My sister and I will say "Uranas" no matter the answer. It's just a fun word to say. And yes it does make me childish.
What color is Uranas? etc....
It's fixed in the future: 2620 - Uranus is renamed Urectum. /Futurama
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