Discovery of Hippocamp

Hippocamp is the smallest known moon of Neptune, only a few tens of kilometres across, and was discovered by the astronomer Mark Showalter of the SETI Institute. He found it by analysing many Hubble Space Telescope images of the planet's ring arcs taken over several years, since it was too faint to be seen by Voyager 2. It orbits very close to the larger moon Proteus, and astronomers have suggested that it may be a fragment knocked off Proteus by a comet impact. Initially designated S/2004 N 1, it was named after the Hippocampus, the sea creature of Greek myth, half horse and half fish, that pulled the chariot of Poseidon.

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