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Image courtesy European Southern Observatory.
New Moons of Uranus and Neptune
News story originally written on October 31, 2003
Astronomers have found new moons around the planets Uranus and Neptune.
Uranus now has 27 moons that we know about. Neptune
has 13 that have been found so far.
Some of the new moons were found in
pictures taken by the Hubble Space Telescope.
Others were found using telescopes on Earth in Hawaii, Chile, and other places.
Astronomers from around the world worked together to find the new moons.
The scientists found four new moons around Uranus. Uranus has five big moons
named Ariel, Miranda, Oberon, Titania and Umbriel.
All of the new moons are very small.
The astronomers also found two new moons around Neptune. Those moons have
very large orbits. They are farther from Neptune than any other known moon
is from the planet it goes around. The new moons of Neptune take about
25 years to go around once!
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