List of Neptune's moons

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Neptune (top) and Triton (bottom).

Neptune has a total of 13 moons. The largest moon is Triton which was discovered by William Lassell just seventeen days after Neptune was found. Then it took one hundred years later to find the second moon, Nereid.

Most of Neptune's moons are named after sea nymphs.

Contents

Unusual orbits[change]

Neptune has a lot of moons who have unusual orbits. Triton which is the largest moon of Neptune, orbits in a retrograde orbit (which means Triton orbits or moves the opposite way from how Neptune spins).

Two moons, Psamathe (discovered in 2002) and Neso (discovered in 2003), are also unusual because they have the largest orbits for any moons discovered in the solar system so far. They take about 25 years to make one orbit and are 125 times farther than how our Moon orbits away from Earth.

How Neptune's moons formed[change]

Many astronomers and scientists think that Neptune's inner moons were not original bodies that formed with Neptune, but were instead remains of debris from Triton that slowly built up together. Other scientists think that when Triton was captured by Neptune, Triton's mass and odd orbit caused Neptune's original moons to be destroyed by gravity, only to be reformed after Triton formed a stable orbit.[1]

While many astronomers also agree that Triton was not an original moon of Neptune, some think that Triton was captured in a "three-body-encounter". What must have happened was that Triton was part of a binary pair1 with another unknown celestial body. The pair was then captured by Triton survived and the other object being affected by Neptune's gravity.[2]

Another possible event had Halimede, which was discovered in 2002, was thought to been originally a piece of Nereid when the moon was possibly hit with another object, since both moons seemed to have the same gray colors.[3] Also Halimede was also calculated that the moon had a high chance of colliding with Nereid in the past.[4]

1Binary pairs are two astronomical objects orbiting closely to each other.

List of moons[change]

The Neptunian moons are listed here by its orbital period, from shortest to longest. Triton, which is not only massive enough for its surface to have collapsed into a sphere, but is comparable in size to our own moon, is highlighted in purple. Irregular (captured) moons are shown in grey; prograde in light grey and retrograde in dark grey. (Triton is also thought to be captured.)

Order
[note 1]
 Label
[note 2]
 Name
 Pronunciation
(key)		 Image Diameter
(km) [note 3]
 Mass
(×1016 kg)[note 4]
 Semi-major axis
(km)[12]
 Orbital period
(d)[12]
 Inclination
(°)[12][note 5]
 Eccentricity
[12]
 Discovery
year[5]
1 Neptune III Naiad ˈneɪ.əd
Naiad Voyager.png
 66
(96 × 60 × 52)		 19 48,227 0.294 4.691 0.0003 1989
2 Neptune IV Thalassa θəˈlæsə
Naiad Voyager.png
 82
(108 × 100 × 52)		 35 50,074 0.311 0.135 0.0002 1989
3 Neptune V Despina dɨsˈpiːnə
Despina.jpg
 150
(180 × 148 × 128)		 210 52,526 0.335 0.068 0.0002 1989
4 Neptune VI Galatea ˌɡæləˈtiːə
Galatea moon.jpg
 176
(204 × 184 × 144)		 212 61,953 0.429 0.034 0.0001 1989
5 Neptune VII Larissa ləˈrɪsə
Larissa 1.jpg
 194
(216 × 204 × 168)		 460 73,548 0.555 0.205 0.0014 1981
6 Neptune VIII Proteus ˈproʊtiəs
Proteus Voyager 2 (big).jpg
 420
(436 × 416 × 402)		 4,400 117,646 1.122 0.075 0.0005 1989
7 Neptune I Triton ♠ ˈtraɪtən
Triton moon mosaic Voyager 2 (large).jpg
 2,705.2 ± 4.8
(2,709 × 2,706 × 2,705)		 2,140,800 ± 5200 354,759 5.877 156.865 0.0 1846
8 Neptune II Nereid ˈnɪəriː.ɪd
Nereid-Voyager2.jpg
 340 ± 50 2,700 5,513,818 360.13 7.090 0.7507 1949
9 Neptune IX Halimede ♠ ˌhælɨˈmiːdiː 62 16 16,611,000 1,879.08 112.712 0.2646 2002
10 Neptune XI Sao ˈseɪ.oʊ 44 5.8 22,228,000 2,912.72 53.483 0.1365 2002
11 Neptune XII Laomedeia ˌleɪ.ɵmɨˈdiːə 42 5.0 23,567,000 3,171.33 37.874 0.3969 2002
12 Neptune X Psamathe ♠ ˈsæməθiː 40 4.4 48,096,000 9,074.30 126.312 0.3809 2003
13 Neptune XIII Neso ♠ ˈniːsoʊ 60 15 49,285,000 9,740.73 136.439 0.5714 2002

Irregular moons[change]

Neptune's irregular satellites.

The picture at the right shows the orbits of Neptune's irregular moons discovered so far. The eccentricity of the orbits is represented by the yellow segments (extending from the pericentre to the apocentre) with the inclination represented on Y axis. The satellites above the X axis are prograde, the satellites beneath are retrograde. The X axis is labelled in Gm (million km) and the fraction of the Hill sphere's (gravitational influence) radius (~116 Gm for Neptune).

Given the similarity of their orbits, it was suggested that Neso and Psamathe could have a common origin in the break-up of a larger moon.[11]

Triton, the biggest moon following a retrograde but a quasi-circular orbit, also thought to be a captured satellite, is not shown. Nereid, on a prograde but very eccentric orbit is believed to be scattered during Triton's capture.[13]

Naming notes[change]

Some asteroids also have the same names as moons of Neptune: 74 Galatea, 1162 Larissa.

Note that Triton did not have an official name until the twentieth century. Although the name was suggested in 1880 by Camille Flammarion, it did not come into regular use until at least the 1930s. Usually, it was simply known as "the satellite of Neptune" (the second satellite, Nereid, was not discovered until 1949).

Other pages[change]

Notes[change]

  1. ↑ Order refers to the position among other moons with respect to their average distance from Neptune.
  2. ↑ Label refers to the Roman numeral attributed to each moon in order of their discovery.[5]
  3. ↑ Diameters with multiple entries such as "60×40×34" reflect that the body is not spherical and that each of its dimensions has been measured well enough. The dimensions of the five inner moons were taken from Karkoschka, 2003.[6]. Dimensions of Proteus are from Stooke, 1994.[7] Dimensions of Triton are from Thomas, 2000,[8] while its diameter is taken from Davies et al., 1991.[9] The size of Nereid is from Smith, 1989.[10] The sizes of the outer moons are from the Sheppard et al., 2006.[11]
  4. ↑ Mass of all moons of Neptune except Triton were calculated assuming a density of 1.3 g/cm³. The volumes of Larissa and Proteus were taken from Stooke, 1994.[7] The mass of Triton is from Jacobson, 2009.
  5. ↑ Each moon's inclination is given relative to its local Laplace plane. Inclinations greater than 90° indicate retrograde orbits (in the direction opposite to the planet's rotation).

References[change]

  1. ↑ D. Banfield and N. Murray (1992). "A dynamical history of the inner Neptunian satellites". Icarus 99: 390. http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-bib_query?bibcode=1992Icar...99..390B&db_key=AST&data_type=HTML&format=&high=444b66a47d03051.
  2. ↑ C.B. Agnor & D.P. Hamilton Neptune's capture of its moon Triton in a binary-planet gravitational encounter, Nature, 441 (2006), pp. 192. (pdf)
  3. ↑ T.Grav, M.Holman and W.Fraser, Photometry of Irregular Satellites of Uranus and Neptune, The Astrophysical Journal, 613 (2004), pp.L77–L80 (preprint)
  4. ↑ M.Holman, JJ Kavelaars, B.Gladman, T.Grav, W.Fraser, D.Milisavljevic, P.Nicholson, J.Burns, V.Carruba, J-M.Petit, P.Rousselot, O.Mousis, B.Marsden, R.Jacobson Discovery of five irregular moons of Neptune, Nature, 430 (2004), pp. 865-867. Final preprint(pdf)
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 "Planet and Satellite Names and Discoverers". Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature. USGS Astrogeology. July 21, 2006. http://planetarynames.wr.usgs.gov/append7.html. Retrieved 2006-08-05.
  6. ↑ Template:Cite doi
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 Template:Cite doi
  8. ↑ Thomas, P.C. (2000). "NOTE: The Shape of Triton from Limb Profiles". Icarus 148 (2): 587–588. doi:10.1006/icar.2000.6511.
  9. ↑ Davies, Merton E.; Rogers, Patricia G.; Colvin, Tim R. (1991). "A control network of Triton". Journal of Geophysical Research 96 (E1): 15,675–681. doi:10.1029/91JE00976.
  10. ↑ Template:Cite doi
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 Scott S. Sheppard, David C. Jewitt, Jan Kleyna, A Survey for "Normal" Irregular Satellites Around Neptune: Limits to Completeness (preprint)
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 12.3 Jacobson, R.A. (2008) NEP078 - JPL satellite ephemeris
  13. ↑ goldreich, P.; Murray, N.; Longaretti, P. Y.; Banfield, D. Neptune's story, Science, 245, (1989), p. 500-504.

Other websites[change]
Moons
Naiad · Thalassa · Despina · Galatea · Larissa · Proteus · Triton · Nereid · Halimede · Sao · Laomedeia · Psamathe · Neso
Neptune.jpg
Characteristics
Discovery
Exploration
Neptune Trojans
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