Uranus found to have two extra moons

Press, 24 January 1986, Page 6

Uranus found to have two extra moons

NZPA-Reuter Pasadena, California

The cameras of the Voyager 2 spacecraft, moving smoothly towards the first close-up examination of Uranus, had detected two more tiny moons and atmospheric clouds surrounding the seventh planet, American space agency scientists said yesterday. The newly discovered satellites were far smaller than the. seven others found by Voyager and were also much darker than had been expected, they said. Called “shepherding” satellites because they keep together the particles of the nine narrow rings surrounding Uranus, the two moons were about 14km and 19km in diameter respectively, the scientists said.

Fourteen moons are now known to orbit Uranus, but scientists ex-

pect to find as many as a dozen more as Voyager draws to within 96,540 km of the planet tomorrow and sends sharper images back to earth by radio , beam over 2.90 billion kilometres of space. Brad Smith, who heads the team responsible for Interpreting the photographs, said that scientists at the space agency’s Jet? k Propulsion Laboratory did not know what the clouds , were made of. “It’s possible that they are methane but it’s also possible that they are some hydrocarbon vola-, ' tiles that have condensed in the atmopshere.” A computer-enhanced photograph of Uranus, taken earlier this week ' from a distance of more than 2.57 billion kilometres, revealed a brown, < smog-like haze over the . southern polar region that , gave the planet an eyelike image. ;