NASA Hubble Finds New Neptune Moon

[MRB_Doom]

NASA Hubble Finds New Neptune Moon

Another moon for UAC operations? Pimp my teleport!

EDIT: Listening to Steve Roach's The Magnificent Void (space music) is awesome while reading this kind of news :)

[DoOmEr4LiFe]

It's incredible how they are still finding moons in our own system. You'd think by now they'd all be cataloged. Technology marches on I suppose.

[Maes]

Seems small enough to elude detection by traditional means -gravitational influence of orbit, eclipsing etc.-, actually it's so small it barely stands out from the rings of debris that circle Neptune. No wonder only -improved- optical detection could find it.

[GreyGhost]

I'll only be mildly surprised if a spectral analysis of that "moon" indicates it's made of bone, steel, flesh, corruption and death.

[Maes]

Does it have to smell familiar too, like fried excrement?

Edit: I REGRET NOTHING

[Tristan]

Astronomical naming conventions are that the year given in the temporary names is the year of discovery.

The article said:

S/2004 N 1

ok. I wasn't under the impression that discovering something in 2013 means it was discovered in 2004 because that's when the earliest image was taken.


Still, cool discovery. I'll add it to my documentation.

[Captain Red]

DoOmEr4LiFe said:

It's incredible how they are still finding moons in our own system. You'd think by now they'd all be cataloged. Technology marches on I suppose.

We're not even sure if we've found all the planets yet. There could be more close to the sun that we can't see because it's too bright.

[GreyGhost]

Maes said:

Does it have to smell familiar too, like fried excrement?

I'm not familiar with the smell of fried excrement, curse my sheltered upbringing! :P

[Quasar]

One problem is that, unlike "planet" which was recently restricted, the definition of "moon" has no lower bound. A piece of non-terrestrial-origin space junk could be called a moon if it were discovered orbiting another planet.

This is why Saturn now has dozens upon dozens "moons" some of which you could probably fit in your backyard.

At some point I think they're going to have to draw lines between moons, captured asteroids, and "small satellite objects," before we have planets with 300 "moons" around them 9_9

[Aliotroph?]

Captain Red said:

We're not even sure if we've found all the planets yet. There could be more close to the sun that we can't see because it's too bright.

Given there are size restrictions on what counts as a planet, I'm pretty sure we're done there. Anything big enough to count would have a noticeable gravitational effect.

[Tristan]

Quasar said:

This is why Saturn now has dozens upon dozens "moons" some of which you could probably fit in your backyard.

At some point I think they're going to have to draw lines between moons, captured asteroids, and "small satellite objects," before we have planets with 300 "moons" around them 9_9

I think Saturn is the best example for defining this, and it seems like some sort of definition is already in place. If you include the rings, you have millions upon millions of moons in orbit around Saturn. As-is the rings are discounted, bringing the total count down to 62.

Or did you mean objects on a larger scale, such as S/2004 N 1 and the many others like it?

[Quast]

Quasar said:

One problem is that, unlike "planet" which was recently restricted, the definition of "moon" has no lower bound. A piece of non-terrestrial-origin space junk could be called a moon if it were discovered orbiting another planet.

It's all meaningless conjecture to figure out proper definitions anyway to be honest. Are planets 'moons' of the central star? Are stars 'moons' of the central black hole? Moon really isn't even the proper terminology to use. Natural satellite is. Then the answer to both of my questions is 'yes' in a roundabout way.

Truthfully, imo size is irrelevant. Consider Titan, Callisto and Ganymede, all 3 satellites are larger than the planet mercury.

[Quasar]

Quast said:

It's all meaningless conjecture to figure out proper definitions anyway to be honest. Are planets 'moons' of the central star? Are stars 'moons' of the central black hole? Moon really isn't even the proper terminology to use. Natural satellite is. Then the answer to both of my questions is 'yes' in a roundabout way.

Truthfully, imo size is irrelevant. Consider Titan, Callisto and Ganymede, all 3 satellites are larger than the planet mercury.

True.

If you really want some vague scenarios, consider the case of a sub-ignition-temperature brown dwarf orbiting a G-class star. The cut-off between brown dwarfs and super-Jupiter gas giants is already vaguely defined, so is this a binary star system or a single solar system? What of planets that may orbit either object? Are they planets, or moons? Bleh :P

[Avoozl]

Quast said:

Truthfully, imo size is irrelevant. Consider Titan, Callisto and Ganymede, all 3 satellites are larger than the planet mercury.

But is there ever a planet with a larger moon?

[Quast]

Avoozl said:

But is there ever a planet with a larger moon?

More massive? No. Bodies orbit around their common center of gravity.

[david_a]

Avoozl said:

But is there ever a planet with a larger moon?

Good old Luna is actually extremely large compared to the size of the Earth, far bigger relatively than any other moon in the solar system. I wasn't immediately able to find any info on whether they've found another planet that has a larger moon in relative size.

[Tristan]

No extrasolar moons have been discovered yet AFAIK. I can't wait for the discovery of the first one though, something about it really excites me.

The Earth and the Moon sizes are in a ratio of roughly 6:1. The only other moons of large size orbit Saturn and Jupiter (Jupiter:Ganymede is 28:1).
Before it got demoted, Pluto's size was 19:10 with it's largest moon, Charon, I think that's the only one like what david_a was looking for.

[Quasar]

Eris Falling said:

No extrasolar moons have been discovered yet AFAIK. I can't wait for the discovery of the first one though, something about it really excites me.

The Earth and the Moon sizes are in a ratio of roughly 6:1. The only other moons of large size orbit Saturn and Jupiter (Jupiter:Ganymede is 28:1).
Before it got demoted, Pluto's size was 19:10 with it's largest moon, Charon, I think that's the only one like what david_a was looking for.

Citation needed on your ratio of Jupiter:Ganymede. What unit are you talking about? Mass? Volume? Surface area? Diameter? I am highly skeptical that 28:1 is the ratio for any of these, considering Jupiter is 317.8 Earth masses, 1321.3 Earth volumes, and 121.9 Earth surface areas. Meanwhile Ganymede is a mere 2.02 times more massive than Luna. Compared to Jupiter, it's a speck of dust.

[Tristan]

Sorry, should've clarified. I was working with radius/diameter.

Jupiter's diameter is 88,846 miles, Ganymede's is 3,273, or at least close enough to these values.
Closer to 27:1 then, but still.

EDIT: Eris and Dysnomia are in a diameter ratio of about 4:1 I think. Eris was briefly named as the tenth planet between 2003-6.