S23B0114

It is much harder to discover moons around Neptune compared to the other giant planets because of its extreme distance. Neptune has only 7 known outer moons. Neptune’s outer moons system is interesting since the extremely inclined large moon Triton might be a captured Kuiper Belt object that disrupted the original primordial moon system and scattered outwards the highly eccentric moon Nereid. To better constrain the origin of Triton and the other outer moons, further disrupted or captured moons of Neptune must be discovered. Also, the discovery of smaller moons would shed light on the poorly understood collisional evolution of the system. In September 2021 two new candidate Neptune moons were discovered at Subaru. These new moons were recovered with Gemini a month later, but bad weather did not allow them a final recovery. The new moons now have very large uncertainties and need HSC once again to recover them to obtain the moon’s precise orbits around Neptune. This will allow us to compare Neptune’s moon system to the other giant planets to constrain the formation and evolution of the planets and their moons.


This document was translated from LATEX by HEVEA.