Elusive Moons Could Be Lurking In Our Cosmic Neighborhood Undetected

Guess it's time someone told those elusive moons in our cosmic backyard -- assuming that they exist -- to stop being too harsh on our astronomers. Yes, elusive! Because many scientists believe that they are somewhere out there lurking in the darkness of the distant Solar System, but haven't found any conclusive evidence yet to support that idea.

It is not uncommon for astronomers to discover new moons even today. Ever since NASA commissioned the venerable Hubble Space Telescope, scientists had figured it out that despite all our technologies, there are still relatively massive objects out there that we can not detect that easily. However, that somewhat pesky status-quo could change soon after the more sophisticated James Webb Space Telescope takes charge in 2018.

But until then, astronomers will have to manage with other methods including a thorough reexamination of the older data gathered from the Voyagers and other spacecraft.

Worth noting, the Cassini factor could play a big role here. Since the Cassini probe started sending data about Saturn in 2004, scientists have learned quite a lot about ring behavior and how satellites affect them. Now they are applying that understanding to examine the Uranus system (and that's where the data from Voyager could come handy).

So far, astronomers looking for undiscovered moons in that part of the Solar System have spotted certain regular patterns in the rings that indicate the presence of moonlets there.

"There were some very clear periodic variations in the structure of the alpha and the beta rings," said University of Idaho physics researcher Matthew Hedman in an interview with the Seeker. Hedman played an important role in the experiment led by doctoral student Rob Chancia.

"The opacity of the ring just changed in a periodic way over a couple of kilometers. The thing that was weird about the structure was it had different wavelengths in different places. It wasn't the same kind all the way around the ring, which a lot of ring structures are."

As of today, that's all the astronomers have at their disposal. Headman and his graduate students are currently preparing to publish the results of their research in the Astronomical Journal hoping that somebody with more experience in spacecraft imaging will be able to spot the moonlets. Meanwhile, Headman and his colleagues could extend their investigation to other parts of the Solar System for further clues.