S/2004 N 1

Mark Showalter

S/2004 N 1 (also Neptune XIV) is the sechstinnerste and smallest known moon of the planet Neptune.

Discovery

S/2004 N 1 was discovered on 1 July 2013 by Mark Showalter at the SETI Institute in Mountain View / California, as he examined Neptune's ring system. He noticed a white dot between the orbits of the moons Larissa and Proteus. On more than 150 archive photographs from the Hubble Space Telescope between 2004 and 2009, the point cropped up again and again, from which he was able to calculate the circular orbit of the moon. In recordings of the Voyager 2 spacecraft, which flew past Neptune in 1989, he could not be seen due to its low brightness.

Path data

S/2004 N 1 orbits Neptune on an approximately circular, hardly inclined path between the moons Larissa and Proteus in an average distance of 105,283 km from the center. For an orbit of the Moon around 19 km wide 22 h 28.1 min.

Structure and physical data

If S/2004 N 1 as other nearby moons has a small albedo, arises from its apparent magnitude of 26.5 may be a maximum diameter of 16-20 km. He would be the smallest of the 14 known moons of Neptune. Despite its low brightness it can just be seen in the pictures from the Hubble Space Telescope.

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