Hubble discovers new moon orbiting Neptune

According to NASA, the Hubble Space Telescope found another moon orbiting around Neptune. According to the space agency, this is the 14th satellite on the planet to be discovered, and the light it emits is so faint - about 100 million times brighter than the less bright star visible to the naked eye in the sky - than the probe Voyager 2, which surveyed Neptune in 1989, did not even spot the little star.

The moon was named S / 2004 N 1, and NASA scientists estimate that it is less than 20 kilometers across, making it the smallest satellite in the Neptune system. The object is just over 105, 000 kilometers from Neptune and is located between the orbits of Larissa and Proteus moons, making a complete evolution around the planet every 23 hours.

The star was discovered in early July while one of NASA researchers Mark Showalter was studying faint segments of Neptune's arcs and rings. According to Showalter, the moons and arcs of the planet orbit very fast, so it was necessary to develop a method to track the movement of the object, which involved exhaustively analyzing more than 150 images captured by Hubble between 2004 and 2009.