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Rings of Neptune imaged by the James Webb Space Telescope's NIRCam instrument. The rings of Neptune consist primarily of five principal rings.They were first discovered (as "arcs") by simultaneous observations of a stellar occultation on 22 July 1984 by André Brahic's and William B. Hubbard's teams at La Silla Observatory (ESO) and at Cerro Tololo Interamerican Observatory in Chile. [1]
Neptune's rings and moons viewed in infrared by the James Webb Space Telescope. Neptune has a planetary ring system, though one much less substantial than that of Saturn and Uranus. [168] The rings may consist of ice particles coated with silicates or carbon-based material, which most likely gives them a reddish hue. [169]
In the Solar System, all four giant planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune) have ring systems. Ring systems around minor planets have also been discovered via occultations. Some studies even theorize that the Earth may have had a ring system during the mid-late Ordovician period. [4]
The last time Neptune's rings were seen in detail was during a flyby in 1989 by NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft as it journeyed beyond the solar system and into interstellar space. That historic flyby ...
The next moon, Galatea, orbits just inside the most prominent of Neptune's rings, the Adams ring. [21] This ring is very narrow, with a width not exceeding 50 km, [22] and has five embedded bright arcs. [21] The gravity of Galatea helps confine the ring particles within a limited region in the radial direction, maintaining the narrow ring.
Neptune's rings had been observed from Earth many years prior to Voyager 2 's visit, but the close inspection revealed that the ring systems were full circle and intact, and a total of four rings were counted. [4] Voyager 2 discovered six new small moons orbiting Neptune's equatorial plane, dubbed Naiad, Thalassa, Despina, Galatea, Larissa and ...
[j] Also, with a diameter 5.5% that of Neptune, it is the largest moon of a gas giant relative to its planet in terms of diameter, although Titan is bigger relative to Saturn in terms of mass (the ratio of Triton's mass to that of Neptune is approximately 1:4788). It has a radius, density (2.061 g/cm 3), temperature and chemical composition ...
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