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An annotated picture of some of Neptune's many moons as captured by the James Webb Space Telescope. The bright blue diffraction star is Triton, Neptune's largest moon; while Hippocamp, its smallest regular moon, is too small to be seen. The planet Neptune has 16 known moons, which are named for minor water deities and a water creature in Greek ...
Six new moons were discovered, and the planet was shown to have more than one ring. [163] [188] The flyby provided the first accurate measurement of Neptune's mass which was found to be 0.5 per cent less than previously calculated. The new figure disproved the hypothesis that an undiscovered Planet X acted upon the orbits of Neptune and Uranus.
Triton is the largest natural satellite of the planet Neptune. It is the only moon of Neptune massive enough to be rounded under its own gravity and hosts a thin, hazy atmosphere. Triton orbits Neptune in a retrograde orbit—revolving in the opposite direction to the parent planet's rotation—the only large moon in the Solar System to do so.
Galatea / ɡ æ l ə ˈ t iː ə /, also known as Neptune VI, is the fourth-closest inner moon of Neptune, and fifth-largest moon of Neptune. It is named after Galatea , one of the fifty Nereids of Greek legend , with whom Cyclops Polyphemus was vainly in love.
Despina's diameter is approximately 150 kilometres (93 mi). [4] Despina is irregularly shaped and shows no sign of any geological modification. It is likely that it is a rubble pile re-accreted from fragments of Neptune's original satellites, which were disrupted by perturbations from Triton soon after that moon's capture into a very eccentric initial orbit.
Surface features of Neptune's moons (8 P) T. Triton (moon) (1 C, 13 P) Pages in category "Moons of Neptune" The following 16 pages are in this category, out of 16 total.
Along with its bright rings, the Webb observatory spied Neptune's fainter dust bands and seven of the planet's 14 known moons. The last time Neptune's rings were seen in detail was during a flyby ...
Proteus is the second-largest moon of Neptune and is the largest of its regular prograde moons. It is about 420 km (260 mi) in diameter, larger than Nereid, Neptune's third-largest moon. It was not discovered by Earth-based telescopes because Proteus orbits so close to Neptune that it is lost in the glare of reflected sunlight. [15]