Discovery
Thirty inner satellites are currently known, found orbiting around all four of the giant planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune). Because of their small size, and glare from the nearby planet, they can be very difficult to observe from Earth. Some, such as Pan and Daphnis at Saturn, and Naiad at Neptune, have only ever been observed by spacecraft.
The first inner satellite to be observed was Amalthea, discovered by E. E. Barnard in 1892. Next were the Saturnian moons Epimetheus and Janus, observed in 1966. These two moons are co-orbital (that is, they share the same orbit), and the resulting confusion over their status was not resolved until the Voyager 1 flyby in 1980. Most of the remaining inner satellites were discovered by spacecraft Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 during their flybys of Jupiter (1979), Saturn (1980), Uranus (1986) and Neptune (1989).
The most recent discoveries have been two moons of Uranus (Mab and Cupid), found using the Hubble Space Telescope in 2003, and Daphnis found orbiting Saturn by the Cassini spacecraft in 2005.
Read more about this topic: Inner Moon
Famous quotes containing the word discovery:
“The virtues of society are vices of the saint. The terror of reform is the discovery that we must cast away our virtues, or what we have always esteemed such, into the same pit that has consumed our grosser vices.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I have known no experience more distressing than the discovery that Negroes didn’t love me. Unutterable loneliness claimed me. I felt without roots, like a man without a country ...”
—Sarah Patton Boyle, U.S. civil rights activist and author. The Desegregated Heart, part 1, ch. 10 (1962)
“That the discovery of this great truth, which lies so near and obvious to the mind, should be attained to by the reason of so very few, is a sad instance of the stupidity and inattention of men, who, though they are surrounded with such clear manifestations of the Deity, are yet so little affected by them, that they seem as it were blinded with excess of light.”
—George Berkeley (1685–1753)