Neptune's Mysterious Moon Nereid May Be an Original, Study Shows
- On Wednesday, scientists reported that Neptune's moon Nereid may be the planet's last original companion to survive a cosmic crash, based on a study led by the California Institute of Technology using the NASA Webb Space Telescope.
- Neptune's biggest moon, Triton, barged in from the solar system's frigid outskirts billions of years ago, scattering the planet's original moons and likely forming their shattered remains, according to Matthew Belyakov and his team.
- Webb telescope observations suggest Nereid's composition is inconsistent with Kuiper Belt objects, and Belyakov said the latest findings "strongly rule out" that the moon was ensnared by planetary gravity.
- Calling the findings "an exciting result," Carnegie Science astronomer Scott Sheppard noted the orbit matches "the history we might expect from a moon that originally formed close to Neptune."
- Neptune has only been visited by one spacecraft, NASA's Voyager 2 in 1989, though scientists suggest a visiting spacecraft could clinch the origin story, none are currently planned.
56 Articles
56 Articles
Neptune's moon system reveals new mysteries: Nereid may be an ancient survivor of early collisions in the Solar System.
Among Neptune's 16 Moons, It May Be the Only Original
Neptune's third-largest moon may be the only original one left. A new study argues Nereid is likely a survivor from the planet's original moon system, upending the long-standing idea that it was an interloper snatched from the distant Kuiper Belt, per Space.com . That capture scenario made sense because Nereid's...
Nereida, Neptune's third largest satellite, could be the only intact moon that survived the original Neptune system, points to a new analysis of the data from the James Webb space telescope.The details are published in Science Advances magazine, in an article signed by researchers from the California Institute of Technology in the United States, which points out that the composition of Nereida is inconsistent with the origin of captured object, …
Nereid, Neptune's third-largest moon, may be the only intact survivor of an ancient set of moons destroyed early in the solar system's history, according to a new analysis based on data from the James Space Telescope…
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