Recreation of the planet Neptune and its satellites in orbit. | NASA - The Mundo.es

SETI Institute scientist announced the discovery of the smallest moon found in the orbit of Neptune , the number 14, by analyzing images taken by the Hubble telescope several years.

new moon, known as ‘S/2004 N1′, has a diameter of only 19 miles and orbits outside the ring system of the small planet about 105,250 miles away and was not even detected by the 1989 flyby probe Voyager 2 ‘.

Mark Showalter of the Research Institute for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), found the faint white dot on the new moon of Neptune on July 1, while studying long-exposure images in the system ring the eighth and last planet in the solar system.

Showalter

revised a white dot that appeared strongly in over 150 snapshots taken between 2004 and 2009 by the Hubble orbiting telescope.

Review 150 photographs

“The moons orbit the planet and bows very quickly, so I had to find a way to continue their movement to reveal the details of the system,” he noted. Showalter has indicated that it is something like “a photographer of sports that keeps track of an athlete running the athlete remains in focus, but lack the definition of the bottom.”

Thus, the method involved tracking the movement of a white dot that appears over and over in more than 150 archival photographs taken by Hubble Neptune from 2004-2009. Showalter was then noticed that the white spot was between the orbits of the moons of Neptune Larissa and Proteus and completed a lap around Neptune every 23 hours.

“This is a moon that never stands still in the same place so that you can take a picture,” said Showalter on the great speed with which this small satellite orbit .

The other 13 satellites

After declaring that Pluto was not a planet in 2006, Neptune became the outermost planet of the solar system . The largest of its satellites is Triton , with 2,700 miles in diameter, which also has a retrograde orbit, which is exceptional within the large satellites. For its part, the moon Nereid , with 340 kilometers in diameter, has the most eccentric orbit of all satellites in the solar system: its distance from Neptune varies between 1,353,600 and 9,623,700 kilometers.

Before the arrival of Voyager 2 space probe, only known these two satellites, but NASA spacecraft discovered six more: Naiad, Thalassa, Despina, Galatea, Larissa and Proteus . These six satellites, all with less than 200 miles in diameter, are closest to the planet and possess an inner orbit of Triton.

After that, they have discovered five small moons (using telescopic surveys) between 2002 and 2003, located in distant orbits the planet, which have received the names of Halímedes, Sao, Laomedeia, Psamathe and Nessus . All have high inclination orbits and three have a retrograde orbit.

new satellite should be named following the convention for satellites of Neptune (Roman god of the ocean), so be sought between Greek or Roman deities related .