Just read a Tweet about this very cool movie...

http://palomarskies.blogspot.com/2010/10/a...h-adaptive.html

Cool. Not quite the 100% bland and boring ball we were sold in 1986 is it Stu?

P

Cool. Remember this is still pretty deep in the infrared so not necessarily as much detail would be apparent in visible wavelengths.

Awesome! Neptune is also very pretty;

http://palomarskies.blogspot.com/2010/10/a...h-adaptive.html

Fascinating. I have never seen movie like this. The moon must be Triton (retograde orbit)

I want to live at least another couple hundred years to be able to see these gems up close and learn about their weather patterns like we've done with Jupiter and Saturn thx

Few years ago there was proposition of Neptune orbiter using aero-capture which looked very interesting and somewhat feasible link.

This would be mission providing extreme science benefits, one being first detailed observations of Ice Giant and "free" study of KBO object (Triton)

Who knows maybe we will see that happen.

It's not clear from the video whether the moon moves in front of Neptune or behind it so I don't think you can conclude that the orbit is retrograde (i.e. Triton's) without more info

Well. the moon must be Triton because there are no other large moons it can possibly be! None of the little moons could show up in images like these.

Phil

I agree with Phil. Furthermore from the few frames of the movie it seems that curvature of the moon's orbit is that of the object in the foreground in the roughly equatorial orbital plane.

Edit: I'm not so sure now. I'm thinking it might have been one of the smaller moons closer to the planet. Size of Triton's orbit would make it unlikely to be captured in the same frame as Neptune.

Edit #2: I did some calculations and it seems that that moon moves far to fast for it to be Triton (whole animation is of 6 hours of Neptune's rotation). I would guess that moon must be one of the closer ones to the planet (Naiad perhaps?)

Unlikely, yes, but the size argument seems decisive to me. Everything else orbiting Neptune is very small.

Phil

What about a background star?

In the description of the movie guys from Palomar say that it is a "one of the moons of Neptune".