Another moon of Uranus has been discovered — its total number now reaches 29

According to NASA, an international team of scientists led by the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) has discovered a new moon of Uranus. The discovery was made while processing observations from the James Webb Space Telescope conducted on February 2, 2025.

The moon was identified in a series of 10 deep 40-minute exposures taken with the NIRCam camera. The head of the study, Mariam El Mutaamid, explained that the object is small — its diameter is estimated at about 10 kilometers, which is why it was not registered during the flyby of the Voyager 2 spacecraft nearly 40 years ago. Team member Matthew Tiscareno noted that Uranus has an unusually large number of small inner moons, whose interactions with the rings point to a complex history of system formation.

Scientists also note that the new discovery is the faintest and smallest among Uranus’s known inner moons, which increases the likelihood of finding additional small objects during further observations with James Webb and other instruments.

What this means for residents of Cyprus: there is no direct practical impact, but the discovery highlights progress in space science and demonstrates the capabilities of modern telescopes for studying the Solar System. The new data will help refine models of the formation of giant planets and their rings.