Neptune gets a new moon , our solar-system a new member

The recent developments have found out that a member of our solar system, Neptune has not 13 but 14 moons. The new moon, Neptune’s tiniest at just 19.3 km across, is designated S/2004 N 1. The U.S. space agency has announced the discovery of Neptune’s 14th moon. The Hubble Space Telescope captured the moon as a white dot in photos of the planet on the outskirts of our solar system. The new moon, Neptune’s tiniest at just 19.3 km across, is designated S/2004 N 1. The SETI Institute’s Mark Showalter made the discovery. He was studying the segments of rings around Neptune when the white dot popped out, 105,250 km from Neptune. He tracked its movement in more than 150 pictures taken from 2004 to 2009. The considerably bigger gas giant Jupiter has four times as many moons, with 67. “It is so small and dim that it is roughly 100 million times fainter than the faintest star that can be seen with the naked eye” said the space agency. “It even escaped detection by NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft, which flew past Neptune in 1989 and surveyed the planet’s system of moons and rings,” it added. “The moons and arcs orbit very quickly, so we had to devise a way to follow their motion in order to bring out the details of the system,” Mr. Showalter said. “It’s the same reason a sports photographer tracks a running athlete — the athlete stays in focus, but the background blurs,” he said. The method involved tracking the movement of a white dot that appears over and over again in more than 150 archival Neptune photographs taken by Hubble from 2004 to 2009. On a whim, Mr. Showalter looked far beyond the ring segments and noticed the white dot about 65,400 miles from Neptune, located between the orbits of the Neptunian moons Larissa and Proteus, NASA said. Estimated to be about 12 miles in diameter, the moon is located about 65,400 miles from Neptune. "We had been processing the data for quite some time and it was on a whim that I said, 'OK, let's just look out further," Showalter said. "I changed my program so that instead of stopping just outside the ring system it processed the data all the way out, walked away from my computer and waited an hour while it did all the processing for me. When I came back, I looked at the image and there was this extra dot that wasn't supposed to be there," Showalter said. Follow-up analysis of other archived Hubble images of Neptune verified the object was a moon. Showalter and colleagues are mulling over a name to propose to the International Astronomical Union, which has final say in the matter. "We haven't really gotten far with that. What I can say is that the name will be out of Roman and Greek mythology and it will have to do with characters who are related to Neptune, the god of the oceans," he said. Neptune's largest moon, Triton, was discovered in 1846, just days after the planet itself was found. Nereid, Neptune's third largest moon was found in 1949. Images taken by Nasa's Voyager 2 spacecraft unveiled the second largest moon, Proteus, and five smaller moons, Naiad, Thalassa, Despina, Galatea and Larissa. Ground-based telescopes found Halimede, Laomedeia, Sao and Nestor in 2002. Sister moon Psamathe turned up a year later. The newly found moon, designated S/2004 N 1, is located between Larissa and Proteus. It orbits Neptune in 23 hours. A paper on the discovery is pending. The July 1, 2013 discovery , 24 years after Voyager 2 swung by the icy-blue giant, expands the known retinue of circling moons to 14. Known only by its temporary designation —S/20044 N1—the tiny celestial piece of real estate measures no more than 12 miles (19 kilometers) across and appears to have escaped detection until now because of its extreme faintness and far flung orbit beyond the planet’s ring fragment system known as arcs.  “The moons and arcs orbit very quickly, so we had to devise a way to follow their motion in order to bring out the details of the system,” he said in a statement issued by NASA on Monday.  The origins of S/20044 N1 and some of its other tiny neighboring moons is still a mystery. But one theory is that Neptune’s largest moon Triton may have had something to do with it. Triton—nearly the size of Earth’s moon—is thought to be a gravitationally captured dwarf planet, which upon it’s arrival, may have broken apart the original Neptunian satellite system and created many of the small moons we see today

Some facts about Neptune’s 14th moon S/2004 N 1

• The Neptune’s 14 moon is very small and dim and is roughly 100 million times fainter than the faintest star that can be seen with the naked eye. 
• The Neptune’s 14 moon escaped detection by NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft, which flew past Neptune in 1989 and surveyed the planet’s system of moons and rings 
• The moon is estimated to be no more than 12 miles across and smallest known moon in the Neptunian system.
• The moons and arcs orbit very quickly, so there had to be a way to follow their motion in order to bring out the details of the system. It’s the same reason a sports photographer tracks a running athlete — the athlete stays in focus, but the background blurs.