Discovery of Naiad

Naiad is the innermost known moon of Neptune, discovered in September 1989 from images taken by the Voyager 2 spacecraft as it approached the planet. The discovery was announced by Richard Terrile and colleagues. It is a small, irregular and elongated body, only a few dozen kilometers across, and it orbits very close to Neptune, inside the planet's synchronous orbit, so its orbit is slowly shrinking. It is thought to be fated either to break up into a ring or to fall into the planet in the distant future. It is named after the Naiads, the water nymphs of Greek mythology who inhabited springs, rivers and lakes.

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