The universe does not stay still, and now astronomers have confirmed that there is a new moon orbiting Uranus. A small satellite that has been invisible for almost four decades, but that was there when Voyager 2 passed in 1986, how can that be? It is called S/2025 U1, it is not a very pretty name for the moment, but it is an incredible satellite. It is tiny, dark, and it was hidden among the rings of the planet, even when we were closest to Uranus. How is it possible that a historic mission overlooked an entire moon? What does its existence mean for the dynamics of Uranus? And what other things have escaped us?
Hidden for 40 years
Millions of data, thousands of images, decades of archives… and a moon that went completely unnoticed, as if it did not want anyone to see it, shy.
The object measures about 10 kilometers in diameter, as if it were a small town lost in the middle of space. And it was not made small by its size, but its position, it is hidden among the rings of Uranus and moves fast and with very little reflected light, so it was very difficult to see.
Voyager tried.
Sometimes we idealize the technology of the past as if it were pure magic, but the truth is that Voyager 2 worked with cameras that today would be comparable to a camera from your old Nokia. So, whether it saw it or not, it did not have real capacity to distinguish that there was a moon there.
But James Webb arrived
Yes, as always, James Webb is the most advanced telescope created on Earth (where else?), so a team led by researcher Maryame El Moutanid decided to look at Uranus with the James Webb telescope, and there it captured what shines very little, and between shine and shine appeared this moon that was hidden.
A small moon, but with a lot to tell
Although S/2025 U1 seems irrelevant because of its size, it may have a key role inside the ring system of Uranus, and they believe that these moons (called “shepherds”) act as cosmic sculptors, shaping the rings and controlling their distribution.
If this is confirmed, there could be many more small moons hidden out there, and the rings of Uranus would come to be considered something with order and not something random as it was believed now.
The scientific community now demands to send an exclusive mission to investigate Uranus, because telescopes can be very helpful but they also have many limitations.
Now what there is are questions, how were the rings of Uranus born? Where do they come from and above all, do they have internal activity?
Simulations and curiosity
Meanwhile, NASA is preparing models with supercomputers to simulate the history of S/2025 U1, where it came from, how it behaves, if it is a fragment of something bigger, if it was born from the rings themselves…
Is it something obsessive?
Yes, but everything in astronomy is, anything, no matter how small, can change the rules of everything. And out there there is everything, there are exoplanets, there is dark matter, black holes, hundreds, thousands of moons, asteroids… Everything we know now once began as “something insignificant”
So, anything that is out there is interesting, don’t you think?
Rewriting history
With this small moon, scientists are questioning the architecture of the Solar System and once again showing us that we are still in the Era of (space) Discoveries.
Tiny but with a great impact. We still do not know what it is doing there, nor why it hides, but it makes clear that the Universe is millions of years ahead of us… what else will be hidden out there?