Add a new member to the solar system family! A tiny new moon has been discovered orbiting distant Neptune.
The moon was discovered by an astronomer who went through the archive of Hubble Space Telescope (HST) photos of the blue-green planet from 2004-2009 and found the 12-mile wide moon wandering over 65,000 miles from Neptune.
The moon, temporarily called S/2004 N1, is the 14th moon of Neptune. It was found during a study of the ring segments that partially encircle the planet. Mark Showalter made the discovery on July 1st when on a whim he decided to look beyond the ring segments or arcs and found the solitary white dot in the photos.
Pluto's newest moons were just named - see my July 4th blog - and Neptune's moon will go through the same process to get named.
Astronomy has always benefited from the study of archived telescopic observations and Snowalter's whim to go out to new territory on old photographs shows why.
Very cool.
Read More ABout It: http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2013/15jul_neptunemoon/
http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2013/30
Sky Guy in VA
Astronomy has always benefited from the study of archived telescopic observations and Snowalter's whim to go out to new territory on old photographs shows why.
Very cool.
Read More ABout It: http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2013/15jul_neptunemoon/
http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2013/30
Sky Guy in VA
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