New Moons and Rings Found Around Uranus

Upon seeing the new moons, Mark Showalter of the SETI Institute and his colleagues re-examined images that the Voyager 2 spacecraft took when it flew by Uranus in 1986, and found that the two moons were there, but were not recognised at the time.

The Hubble images also confirmed the existence of Perdita, a moon which was first identified in the Voyager 2 pictures. Perdita is the largest of the three moons, measuring about 16 miles across.

The moons and the newly discovered rings are orbiting outside the previously known ring system but closer to the planet than the five largest moons.