A new proof that we have not discovered everything about our solar system : NASA announced this monday that Hubble discovered a new moon of Neptune. It is actually the smallest moon of the planet.
With a diameter of 19 km, S/2004 N 1 (provisional name of the moon) orbits at a distance of more than 105,000 km from Neptune (between the orbits of Larissa and Proteus) and makes a complete revolution in about 23 hours. According to NASA, the moon shines about 100 million times less than the palest of stars which can be seen to the naked eye.
With its small size, S/2004 N 1 escaped Voyager 2. Indeed, without knowing it, the space probe was near the moon while it studied all Neptune system in 1989. But finally, it's with about 150 photos taken by Hubble of Neptune system between 2004 and 2009 that astronomers found a little white point orbiting around Neptune. The confirmation of the existence of this moon is announced on July 1st by Mark Showalter for SETI Institute in Mountain View (source : maxisciences.com, french post)
The real name of S/2004 N 1 will be announced in the next days or the next weeks by NASA. And maybe, it won't be the last moon that we can find in our solar system. Who knows ?...
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Notice to astronomers and amateurs : tonight asteroid 2012-DA14 pass near Earth at 7:26 P.M. (London time GMT+00). It will be possible to see with binoculars.
Here are some numbers: 2012-DA14, a near-Earth asteroid discovered a year ago, is 45 meters in diameter and has a mass of about 120 000 tonnes (120 million kilograms). We assure you: this big rock is closer to the earth at about 27,700 km above the ground.
After this passage, the asteroid will change its orbital period: from 368 to 317 days. We won't see him again until 16 February 2046 and will be about 1.5 million kilometers from Earth.
You can see this event in live thanks to NASA : they have given a link to see in live the passage of DA14. The live begins at 7:00 P.M. (London time). Watch it :
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html
Or see the passage from an other website, from the Canary Islands :
http://events.slooh.com/
We will show you after some photos taken, in this article, in about one hour. ...
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