{"id":220487,"date":"2025-08-20T07:29:46","date_gmt":"2025-08-20T12:29:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/08\/webb-discovers-a-new-moon-orbiting-uranus"},"modified":"2025-08-20T07:29:46","modified_gmt":"2025-08-20T12:29:46","slug":"webb-discovers-a-new-moon-orbiting-uranus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/08\/webb-discovers-a-new-moon-orbiting-uranus","title":{"rendered":"Webb discovers a new moon orbiting Uranus"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"display: block; margin: 0 auto; width: 100%; aspect-ratio: 4\/3; object-fit: contain;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/pA8jJOEHGtg?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope;\n   picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Using NASA\u2019s James Webb Space Telescope, a team led by the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) has identified a previously unknown moon orbiting Uranus, expanding the planet\u2019s known satellite family to 29. The detection was made during a Webb observation on Feb. 2, 2025.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis object was spotted in a series of ten 40-minute long-exposure images captured by the Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam),\u201d said Maryame El Moutamid, a lead scientist in SwRI\u2019s Solar System Science and Exploration Division based in Boulder, Colorado. \u201cIt\u2019s a small moon but a significant discovery, which is something that even NASA\u2019s Voyager 2 spacecraft didn\u2019t see during its flyby nearly 40 years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The newly discovered moon is estimated to be just six miles (10 kilometers) in diameter, assuming it has a similar reflectivity (albedo) to Uranus\u2019s other small satellites. That tiny size likely rendered it invisible to Voyager 2 and other telescopes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Using NASA\u2019s James Webb Space Telescope, a team led by the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) has identified a previously unknown moon orbiting Uranus, expanding the planet\u2019s known satellite family to 29. The detection was made during a Webb observation on Feb. 2, 2025. \u201cThis object was spotted in a series of ten 40-minute long-exposure images [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2028],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-220487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-satellites"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=220487"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220487\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=220487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=220487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=220487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}