Here on Earth, we are used to having just one moon orbiting around us, but it is well known that other planets have a lot more. Up until recently, the planet Uranus was thought to have 29 moons, but new images from the James Webb Space Telescope revealed a new one.

This newest moon hasn’t been named yet, but it was spotted orbiting the giant planet at a distance of just 35,000 miles, which is far closer than most other moons. It is also extremely small, measuring in at just 6 miles in diameter.

Maryame El Moutamid is the Southwest Research Institute’s lead scientist, and in a NASA statement, she said:

“It’s a small moon but a significant discovery, which is something that even NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft didn’t see during its flyby nearly 40 years ago.”

Having so many moons makes this planet especially interesting to study for many astronomers. The interaction between the planet, the moons with each other, the sun, and other objects in space (such as Jupiter) can make it especially difficult to make accurate predictions.

Identifying this latest moon, however, is just one more step in completing the understanding of the overall makeup of this part of the solar system, which will make predictions more accurate and theories about the formation of the system even better.

SETI Institute researcher and one of the members of the research team that spotted the new moon, Matthew Tiscareno, said:

“No other planet has as many small inner moons as Uranus, and their complex inter-relationships with the rings hint at a chaotic history that blurs the boundary between a ring system and a system of moons. Moreover, the new moon is smaller and much fainter than the smallest of the previously known inner moons, making it likely that even more complexity remains to be discovered.”

The newly discovered moon is by far the smallest one found so far. The next smallest is the moon Miranda, which is 290 miles in diameter. The largest moon orbiting the planet is Titania, coming in at 981 miles in diameter. All of the moons of Uranus are quite small compared to our own moon, which is a comparative giant at 2159 miles in diameter.

Finding this moon was a major accomplishment and a testament to the many instruments available on the James Webb Space Telescope. SETI Institute researcher and team member Mark Showalter explained how unlikely it was to find in a statement to New Scientist:

“It’s a tiny object right next to a very, very bright object. It’s like staring into the headlight of a car and trying to look at a fly.”

It is possible that other moons around this, or any planet in our solar system, could still be found using the impressive space telescope or other telescopes that will be deployed in the future.

If you thought that was interesting, you might like to read about a second giant hole has opened up on the sun’s surface. Here’s what it means.