Bay Area Man Discovers New Moon

A sharp-eyed Bay Area man has been credited with the discovery of a new moon that orbit the planet Neptune located more than 2.6 billion miles away from Earth. 

Officials from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration announced Tuesday, July 16, that Mark Showalter of the SETI Institute in Mountain View found the moon July 1. The moon, estimated to be more than 12 miles across, becomes the 14th known moon to orbit the distant blue-green planet. 

According to NASA, the small and dimly-lit moon remained undetected by NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft which flew past Neptune in 1989 and surveyed the giant planet’s system of moons and rings. 

With data from the Hubble Space Telescope, Showalter studied the faint arcs, or segments of rings, around Neptune when he made the discovery. On a whim Showalter extended his analysis outward to regions beyond the ring system, and noticed an extra white dot about 65,400 miles from Neptune, located between the orbits of the moons Larissa and Proteus.

Showalter next analyzed more than 150 archival Neptune photographs taken by Hubble from 2004 to 2009. The same white dot appeared over and over again. He then plotted a circular orbit for the moon, which completes one revolution around Neptune every 23 hours.