NASA 's Hubble Space Telescope has discovered a new moon orbiting the distant blue-green planet Neptune. The moon is the 14th known to orbit the giant planet.
The moon, codenamed S/2004 N 1, is estimated to be 12 miles across, making it the smallest known moon in the Neptune system. It is very small and appears very faint. About 100 million times fainter than the smallest star visible to the naked eye. It even escaped the attention of NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft, which flew past Neptune in 1989 and surveyed the planet's moon system.
Mark Showalter of the SETI Institute in Mountain View , California, discovered the moon on July 1 while studying the faint arcs, or segments of rings, around Neptune. “The orbits of the moons and arcs are very fast, so I had to figure out a way to follow their motion in order to bring out the details of the system,” he said. “It’s the same reason a sports photographer wants to follow an athlete — they put the athlete in focus and blur the background.”
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For images, videos and more information about Neptune's new moon, visit: https://hubblesite.org/news/2013/30
For more information about the Hubble Space Telescope, visit: https://www.nasa.gov/hubble
