Two more moons for Uranus.Large telescopes are often reserved for examining distant reaches of the heavens, but they can do wonders exploring Earth's own backyard. Using the 5-meter Hale Telescope The Hale Telescope is the largest telescope at the Palomar Observatory. The 200-inch (5-m) telescope is named after George Ellery Hale. Hale supervised the building of the telescopes at the Mount Wilson Observatory with grants from the Carnegie Institution of Washington: the atop Palomar Mountain near Escondido, Calif., astronomers have discovered two additional moons orbiting Uranus, bringing to 17 the number of known satellites of this distant planet. The two satellites, the faintest moons ever detected from the ground, were first observed in early September by Brett J. Gladman Brett J. Gladman, born April 19, 1966, is a Canadian astronomer and an Associate Professor at the University of British Columbia's Department of Physics and Astronomy, in Vancouver, British Columbia. He holds a Canada Research Chair in Planetary Astronomy. of the University of Toronto Research at the University of Toronto has been responsible for the world's first electronic heart pacemaker, artificial larynx, single-lung transplant, nerve transplant, artificial pancreas, chemical laser, G-suit, the first practical electron microscope, the first cloning of T-cells, and his colleagues. Other researchers, using telescopes in New Mexico and Hawaii, confirmed the finding, scientists reported in an Oct. 31 circular of the International Astronomical Union “IAU” redirects here. For other uses, see IAU (disambiguation). The International Astronomical Union (IAU) unites national astronomical societies from around the world. . One of the moons has a diameter of about 80 kilometers and lies about 6 million km from Uranus; the other is roughly twice that size and lies about 8 million km away. Both are classified as irregular because they have highly elliptical el·lip·tic or el·lip·ti·cal adj. 1. Of, relating to, or having the shape of an ellipse. 2. Containing or characterized by ellipsis. 3. a. paths and orbit at an angle to the plane in which most other moons orbit their planets. The other two giant planets in our solar system, Jupiter and Saturn, also possess irregular moons, but these are the first discovered around Uranus. The size and angle of their orbits suggest that these moons did not arise from the same cloud of material that condensed con·dense v. con·densed, con·dens·ing, con·dens·es v.tr. 1. To reduce the volume or compass of. 2. To make more concise; abridge or shorten. 3. Physics a. to form Uranus, says codiscoverer Joseph A. Burns of Cornell University. He speculates that the moons may have been chunks of solar system debris that slammed into Uranus' atmosphere when the planet was still very young and its atmosphere bloated. In the process, the debris lost energy and became bound by gravity. |
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