New moons for Neptune? (Astronomy).Astronomers say they have discovered three additional moons circling Neptune. If confirmed, the findings would bring to 11 the planet's retinue and would be the first Neptunian moons found since Voyager 2 flew past the planet in 1989 and the first discovered with ground-based telescopes since 1949. Only 30 to 40 kilometers in diameter, the newly discovered bodies are too dim by a factor of 100 million to be discerned by the naked eye. Also complicating their observation is their great distance from Neptune--roughly 60 times as far as Triton, the planet's largest moon. A team led by Matthew J. Holman Matthew J. Holman (* 1967) is a Smithsonian Astrophysicist and lecturer at Harvard University. Holman studied at MIT, where he received his bachelor's degree in mathematics in 1989 and his PhD in planetary science in 1994. of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics The Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) is located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It consists of the Harvard College Observatory and the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. The Center is located at 60 Garden Street. in Cambridge, Mass., and J.J. Kavelaars of the National Research Council of Canada The National Research Council Canada (NRC) is Canada's leading organization for scientific research and development. History NRC was established in 1916, mainly to advise the government. Then, in the early 1930s, laboratories were built in Ottawa. in Ottawa reported the findings in a Jan. 13 circular of the International Astronomical Union “IAU” redirects here. For other uses, see IAU (disambiguation). The International Astronomical Union (IAU) unites national astronomical societies from around the world. . Each of the bodies orbits in a plane different from that of most of the solar system's planets. According to according to prep. 1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians. 2. In keeping with: according to instructions. 3. the astronomers, one of the objects orbits Neptune in the direction opposite to the planet's rotation. Their findings suggest the purported moons arose from collisions or were captured by the planet shortly after the solar system formed. But planetary scientist Brian G. Marsden Brian G. Marsden (born August 5,1937) is a British astronomer, the longtime director of the Minor Planet Center(MPC). He specializes in celestial mechanics and astrometry, collecting data on the positions of asteroids and comets and computing their orbits, often from minimal of Harvard-Smithsonian cautions that it's not certain that the objects are in fact satellites of Neptune. New observations, based on the predicted positions of these objects a few months from now, should determine whether these denizens of the solar system belong to Neptune, he notes.--R.C. |
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