Using Hubble and new imaging technology, astronomers were able to confirm the existence of the fourteenth and the smallest of the Neptune moons. The object, first seen in pictures of 2004 and designated as S/2004 N1 or Neptune XIV, now bears the official name Hippocamp in honor of the ancient Greek mythical character, the king of fish.
The NASA spacecraft Voyager 2, who visited the Neptune system in 1989, discovered six small internal satellites. Now, thirty years later, we announce the opening of the seventh. It is believed that all of them are younger than the planet and were formed relatively quickly after Neptune captured the largest moon, Triton.
For the first time, the Hippocampus satellite was spotted in 2013 while studying images of the Neptune rings taken by the Hubble space telescope between 2004 and 2005 and in 2009. However, it is only now and after it was revealed for the third time on images of the Neptune system from 2016 that this tiny world was confirmed and cataloged, bringing the total number of official natural satellites at the farthest from the Sun of the planet to fourteen.
The hippocampus orbits Neptune very quickly, making one revolution around the planet in just one earth day. The diameter of 34 kilometers makes it the smallest among all the seven inner moons. It rotates very close to Proteus, which, on the contrary, is the largest among them with a radius of about 200 kilometers, so scientists believe that the Hippocamp was formed from a material torn out by a comet from this satellite.
Proteus has on its surface an extraordinarily large Pharos crater with a size of about 230 kilometers. This is a clear sign that the moon has undergone a catastrophic collision in the past, which threw a lot of matter into space and nearly destroyed it. One of the fragments could become the Hippocamp.
-researchers
The discovery may also help to clarify the question of how the other satellites of Neptune were formed. If the Hippocamp was formed in such a collision, then it is likely that the rest appeared during similar events.
In addition to confirming the fourteenth satellite of Neptune, the study reveals new details about the nearest moon to the planet Naiad, which has not been observed since 1989, and also provide more accurate estimates of the size and orbits of all internal satellites
Neptune officially opened a new satellite – Hippocamp
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