This composite Hubble Space Telescope picture shows the location of a newly discovered moon, designated S/2004 N 1, orbiting the giant planet Neptune, nearly 3 billion miles from Earth.
The moon is so small (no more than 12 miles across) and dim, it was missed by NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft cameras when the probe flew by Neptune in 1989. Several other moons that were discovered by Voyager appear in this 2009 image, along with a circumplanetary structure known as ring arcs.
Mark Showalter of the SETI Institute discovered S/2004 N 1 in July 2013. He analyzed over 150 archival Neptune photographs taken by Hubble from 2004 to 2009. The same white dot appeared over and over again. He then plotted a circular orbit for the moon, which completes one revolution around Neptune every 23 hours.
The black-and-white image was taken in 2009 with Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 in visible light. Hubble took the color inset of Neptune on August 19, 2009.
Credits
NASA, ESA, and M. Showalter (SETI Institute)| About The Object | |
|---|---|
| Object Name | S/2004 N 1, Neptune |
| Object Description | Planet and Recently Discovered Neptunian Moon |
| Distance | The semi-major axis of Neptune's orbit about the Sun is 30.06 astronomical units (roughly 2.8 billion miles or 4.5 billion kilometers). |
| About The Data | |
| Data Description | This image was created from HST data from proposal : M. Showalter (SETI Institute), I. de Pater (University of California, Berkeley), and J. Lissauer (NASA Ames Research Center). |
| Instrument | HST>WFC3/UVIS |
| Exposure Dates | August 19, 2009 |
| Filters | F475W (g), F606W (V), and F775W (i) |
| About The Image | |
| Color Info | This image is a composite of many separate exposures made by the WFC3/UVIS instrument on the Hubble Space Telescope using three different filters. The color results from assigning different hues (colors) to each monochromatic image. In this case, the assigned colors are:Blue: F475W (g)Grayscale: F606W (V)Red/orange: F775W (i) |
| Compass Image |  |
| About The Object | |
|---|---|
| Object Name | A name or catalog number that astronomers use to identify an astronomical object. |
| Object Description | The type of astronomical object. |
| R.A. Position | Right ascension – analogous to longitude – is one component of an object's position. |
| Dec. Position | Declination – analogous to latitude – is one component of an object's position. |
| Constellation | One of 88 recognized regions of the celestial sphere in which the object appears. |
| Distance | The physical distance from Earth to the astronomical object. Distances within our solar system are usually measured in Astronomical Units (AU). Distances between stars are usually measured in light-years. Interstellar distances can also be measured in parsecs. |
| Dimensions | The physical size of the object or the apparent angle it subtends on the sky. |
| About The Data | |
| Data Description |
|
| Instrument | The science instrument used to produce the data. |
| Exposure Dates | The date(s) that the telescope made its observations and the total exposure time. |
| Filters | The camera filters that were used in the science observations. |
| About The Image | |
| Image Credit | The primary individuals and institutions responsible for the content. |
| Publication Date | The date and time the release content became public. |
| Color Info | A brief description of the methods used to convert telescope data into the color image being presented. |
| Orientation | The rotation of the image on the sky with respect to the north pole of the celestial sphere. |
