Neptune - The Fourth Gas Giant and the Eighth Planet

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Halimede

Neptune's moon, Halimede was found by ground telescopes in 2002. Though we didn't get a pic when Voyager whizzed past we were barely able to see it with our ground telescopes.

The real advantage to finding something with a ground telescope is we can take our time to watch it. From this we could tell it's not round and it's about the same color as Nereid.

Even with the few pixels of data we were able to determine it orbits in retrograde wich is backwards from the usual direction moons orbit. Additionally it has a high eccentricity compared to Neptune's other moons.

The combination of the retrograde orbit, high eccentricity, and color we think it's 41% likely Halimede has collided with Nereid in the past or it might be a piece of Nereid knocked off from an impact.

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