The Hubble Space Telescope has uncovered the secret of Neptune's smallest moon
Category : Technology
The most famous space telescope in Earth orbit is surprising again. He recently showed us strange vortices in the atmosphere of Neptune, and now our imagination ignites knowledge about one of the moons.
It is the American Space Agency that the world of astronomy owes so many extraordinary discoveries, the best proof of which is our news, in which we describe the agency's achievements in this matter. It is a pity that China and Russia do not have such a desire to explore, but are focused on space exploration on economic issues. Fortunately, NASA is planning to launch more, even more powerful telescopes in orbit over the next few years, thanks to which we will see the abyss of the Universe and its objects in details in which we have not previously been given.
The latest data obtained using the Hubble Space Telescope and old data from the Voyager 2 probe have made an amazing discovery associated with one of the gas giants of the Solar System. We are talking here about the Hippocampus, discovered only less than 6 years ago the smallest moon known to us Neptune. Data analysis shows that it is most likely a fragment of its larger neighbor, Proteus, the largest inner moon on this planet.
Hippocamp was named after the sea monsters of Greek and Roman mythology. The object is only 34 kilometers in diameter and can approach the largest moon at only 12 thousand kilometers. Typically, this neighborhood leads to the orbit of this smaller object or the collision of both bodies. Nothing like that happened here. Most likely, the puzzle lies in the Proteus itself. Billions of years ago, the comet's hitting the moon torn off a small piece of it, which we now call the Hippocamp.
Scientists from NASA and the SETI Institute emphasize that the history of Proteus itself is also extremely turbulent. It was to be formed billions of years ago, when the Neptune system took over a huge object from the Kuiper Belt, which now became the largest moon of the planet, called Triton. The object tore all the old moons of the planet. New moons arose from the pieces later. It is today we have the pleasure to observe them. So tiny Hippocamp is a remnant of the former comet and one of Neptune's largest moons.