Neptune’s tiny moons may be the wreckage of shattered ancient worlds
Observations from the James Webb Space Telescope suggest that Neptune's inner moons may be debris from an ancient satellite system destroyed by the capture of Triton. This provides new evidence for a catastrophic history in Neptune's orbital evolution.
Why it matters
This discovery helps astronomers reconstruct the violent history of the outer solar system and the formation of planetary moon systems.
In 1989, Voyager 2 discovered six previously unknown moons around Neptune. Five of them are tiny satellites that travel just beyond the planet's main rings. Their small size and distant location have made them extremely difficult to investigate from Earth.
Now, NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has given scientists a much closer look. A Caltech led team used Webb to study Neptune's rings along with three of its inner moons, Larissa, Galatea, and Proteus. The observations revealed a chemical makeup unlike anything previously identified among bodies in the outer solar system.
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