Another moon for Uranus. (Astronomy).Astronomers have confirmed the existence of the 21st moon known to be orbiting Uranus. Dubbed S/2001 U1, the satellite is one of six small Uranian moons that have elliptical orbits and don't move in the same plane as the planet's larger moons. Ranging from 10 to 20 kilometers in diameter, these so-called irregular moons seem to have been created by collisions between larger bodies during the formation of the planets. Because S/2001 U1 is faint and lies at a great distance from Uranus, astronomers had to use several telescopes to confirm its status as a moon. The first sighting was in August 2001 by a team led by Matthew J. Holman Matthew J. Holman (* 1967) is a Smithsonian Astrophysicist and lecturer at Harvard University. Holman studied at MIT, where he received his bachelor's degree in mathematics in 1989 and his PhD in planetary science in 1994. of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics The Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) is located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It consists of the Harvard College Observatory and the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. The Center is located at 60 Garden Street. in Cambridge, Mass., and J.J. Kavelaars of the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory For the Dominion Observatory in Ottawa, see . Dominion Astrophysical Observatory, located on Observatory Hill, in Saanich, British Columbia, was completed in 1918 by the Canadian Government. Proposed and designed by John S. in Victoria, British Columbia, with a telescope at the Cero Tololo Inter-American Observatory in La Serena, Chile La Serena ("the serene one") is the second oldest city in Chile. The city, located 471 km north of Santiago, has a population of 147,815, according to the 2002 census. There are also 12,333 inhabitants of the immediately surrounding countryside. . Christophe Dumas of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory “JPL” redirects here. For other uses, see JPL (disambiguation). Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is a NASA research center located in the cities of Pasadena and La Cañada Flintridge, near Los Angeles, California, USA. in Pasadena, Calif., and Philip Nicholson of Cornell University did follow-up observations at Palomar Observatory near Escondido, Calif. Astronomers also tracked S/2001 U1 using one of the European Southern Observatory's 8-meter telescopes in Paranal, Chile. Dumas and his colleagues reported their findings in a Sept. 30 circular of the International Astronomical Union.--R.C. |
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