Discovery of Laomedeia

Laomedeia is a small outer moon of Neptune, found by a team including Matthew Holman and JJ Kavelaars as part of a deep search for faint irregular satellites around the giant planets. Unlike the large moon Triton, which orbits backwards, Laomedeia travels in the same direction as Neptune's rotation, though on a distant, tilted and elongated orbit that marks it as a captured body. It is named after one of the Nereids, the sea nymphs of Greek mythology, following the convention of naming Neptune's moons for sea deities and sea spirits. It is only a few tens of kilometres across and very faint, so it can be studied only through the largest telescopes.

Open on the timeline