Moons of Neptune

Uncommon card · No. 89550

There are 16 known moons of the planet Neptune, fourteen of which are named after water deities and creatures in Greek mythology. The largest is Triton, discovered by William Lassell on 10 October 1846, 17 days after the discovery of Neptune itself. Over a century passed before the discovery of the second natural satellite, Nereid, in 1949, and another 40 years before Proteus, Neptune's second-largest moon, was discovered in 1989. Triton is unique among moons of planetary mass in that its orbit is retrograde to Neptune's rotation and inclined relative to Neptune's equator, which suggests that it did not form in orbit around Neptune, but was instead gravitationally captured by it. The next-largest satellite in the Solar System suspected to be captured, Saturn's moon Phoebe, has only 0.03% of Triton's mass. The capture of Triton, probably occurring some time after Neptune formed a satellite system, was a catastrophic event for Neptune's original satellites, disrupting their orbits so that...

Read on Wikipedia · Image NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, Public domain