A new discovery is coming to overturn what we knew about Uranus and Neptune as scientists detected three moons, the existence of which was unknown until now in our solar system.

In particular, the new discovery brings the total known moons of Neptune to 16, and that of Uranus to 28. The three new moons are two orbiting Neptune and one orbiting Uranus.

Uranus’ new moon, the first to be discovered orbiting the planet in 20 years, is likely the smallest, measuring just five miles in diameter. At the same time, the two new moons of Neptune are the faintest moon ever discovered by ground-based telescopes.

It is noted that Jupiter has 95 moons and Saturn has 146 and this number is regularly increasing.

Dr. Scott S. Shepard, an astronomer at the Carnegie Institution for Science, led the discovery of the three new moons and reported that “the three newly discovered moons are the faintest ever found around these two ice giant planets using ground-based telescopes.” .

In fact, he added that “special image processing was needed to reveal such faint objects”.

The new Uranus moon is tentatively named S/2023 U1, but will eventually be named after a character from a Shakespeare play, as is customary for Uranus moons.

It was first identified in November last year by Dr. Sheppard using the Magellan telescopes at Carnegie Science’s Las Campanas Observatory in Chile.

At only about 8 kilometers in diameter it is probably the smallest of Uranus’ moons and takes 680 days to orbit the planet.

Sheppard also used the Magellan telescope to find the brighter of Neptune’s two new moons, tentatively named S/2002 N5. It is about 23 km and takes almost nine years to orbit the ice giant.

Meanwhile, Neptune’s darkest moon, S/2021 N1, is about 14 kilometers in diameter with an orbit of nearly 27 years and was found using the Subaru Telescope in Hawaii.

Both moons will be named after the 50 sea goddesses, the Nereids, in Greek mythology.

According to NASA, there are probably thousands more moons waiting to be discovered in our solar system as even with the most powerful ground-based telescopes, many are too small and faint to see.

Uranus and Neptune, the seventh and eighth planets respectively of our solar system, are the only ones in the outer solar system that are composed of ice.

Scientists recently revealed new images of just how similar the two planets really are, claiming that previous pictures had misrepresented their colors.

planets

Pictured, Uranus (left) and Neptune (right)

What we knew was that Neptune is rich blue and Uranus is green, but the two ice giants are actually much closer to the same color than we thought.

In fact, Neptune is a pale blue-green or “blue” color, similar to Uranus and much lighter than the famous deep blue in Voyager 2 images.