Hippocamp is a tiny moon of Neptune found in Hubble frames
Hippocamp spans only about 35 kilometers and orbits just outside Proteus — a faint speck recovered by reprocessing Hubble images years after they were taken.
Its size and path suggest it may be debris from an ancient impact that battered Proteus. Finding it from Earth orbit showed how archival pixels can still hide moons.
Small moons finish the census. Hippocamp proves Neptune’s system was incomplete on Voyager’s maps and that patience with old data can still add a world.
Comments
0 comments