A SPACE rock circling Uranus has been denied official status as a moon by the
International Astronomical Union. They say they won鈥檛 be satisfied it exists
until it has been photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope.
The Voyager 2 spacecraft photographed the 40-kilometre rock as it passed
Uranus in 1986, but no one noticed it in the images until Erich Karkoschka of
the University of Arizona analysed them in 1999. He spotted the object in seven
photographs taken over five days. But the IAU demands observations spanning a
year or more, so that astronomers can calculate an accurate orbit.
Karkoschka thinks he can find the rock with just an hour鈥檚 observation time
on Hubble. His first request for time was turned down, but he plans to try
again.
Advertisement