With the newest addition, Uranus has 28 whole moons. The newest measures solely about 8 kilometres and is most likely the smallest moon of the planet. It takes 680 days to orbit the planet and has been named S/2023 U1. Just like with all outer satellites of Uranus, this may even be named after a personality from a Shakespeare play.

Sheppard first noticed S/2023 U1 on November 4 final yr utilizing the Magellan telescopes at Carnegie Science’s Las Campanas Observatory in Chile. He then made follow-up observations a month later in December on the identical facility. He labored with Marina Brozovic and Bob Jacobson of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and checked out months of observations to detect a potential moon orbit for the discover.

They have been capable of find the brand new member of Uranus’s moon assortment in older photographs that have been taken in 2021 and likewise from photographs taken by the Subaru telescope in Hawaii. Sheppard additionally labored with the Magellan Telescope to seek out the brighter of the 2 newfound Neptunian moons. Sheppard additionally sued the Magellan Telescope to seek out the brighter of the 2 new moons of Neptune.

He then labored with David Tholen of the University of Hawaii, Chad Trujillo of Northern Arizona University, and Patryk Sofia Lykawa of Kindai University to seek out the opposite new Neptunian moon, which was an especially faint object. It was found in September 2021 utilizing the Subaru Telescope.