New Neptune Moon Discovered

The Hubble Space Telescope spied a new moon circling Neptune, making it the planet's 14th known moon, NASA announced Monday

At just 12 miles wide, Neptune's newest moon — dubbed S/2004 N 1 — is also its smallest and dimmest. That could explain why the moon eluded NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft when it circled Neptune in 1989, discovering six of its moons

According to NASA, S/2004 N 1 is also "100 million times fainter than the faintest star that can be seen with the naked eye." Therefore, finding this moon wasn't as simple as looking at one image. SETI Institute's Mark Showalter, who found the moon July 1, pored over archival images Hubble took from 2004 to 2009 after noticing a small, white dot about 65,400 miles away from Neptune.