3 new moons discovered in the solar system

Washington: Scientists have discovered three new moons in the solar system, including two around Neptune and the smallest moon of Uranus.

According to media reports, astronomer Scott S. Shepherd of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington discovered these three moons with the help of Magellan telescopes installed at Las Campanas Observatory in Chile.

Scott said that the moons discovered around these two planets are the faintest moons ever discovered by ground-based telescopes. Special image processing is required to reveal such blurry objects, he said. The discovery required dozens of exposures of the moon every five minutes over several hours.

It should be noted that it is more difficult for astronomers to estimate the total number of moons of Neptune and Uranus compared to other planets that are closer to Earth, such as Jupiter’s moons are all about 2 km in size, while Saturn’s is 3 km. .

However, although the moons of Uranus and Neptune are larger than the others, i.e. 8 to 14 km, still much information is available about these planets because Jupiter and Saturn have been visited several times by spacecraft, but Uranus and Neptune has been visited only once by NASA’s Voyager 2 probe in 1986 and 1989 respectively.