The known moons of Neptune are:
Naiad
Thalassa
Despina
Galatea
Larissa
Hippocamp
Proteus
Triton
Nereid
Halimede
Sao
S/2002 N 5
Laomedeia
Psamathe
Neso
S/2021 N 1
The medieval "planets" (moving heavenly bodies) were:
Sun
Moon
Venus
Jupiter
Mercury
Mars
Saturn
They excluded:
Earth
anything that can only be seen to move through a telescope
Uranus was seen without a telescope but not seen to move. Neptune and Pluto were first seen with telescopes. (Post corrected. See combox.)
Proteus and Triton are mentioned in a sonnet by William Wordsworth:
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.—Great God! I’d rather be
A pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.
This poem is in the public domain.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I still have my old college astronomy textbook from half a century ago. It might be interesting to read what astronomers thought was known of Neptune in those days. I'm sure there has been corrections, advances in knowledge, and changes of mind since then.
Merry Christmas! Sean
"Neptune was seen without a telescope but not seen to move."
Correction, Neptune is not visible without a telescope.
Uranus is barely visible without a telescope in a dark sky to someone with *good* eyesight and was catalogued as a star several times before it was recognized to be a planet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranus#Discovery
After Uranus' discovery its movements didn't quite match predictions and some astronomers suggested that was due to the gravity of an unknown planet yet farther from the sun. This suggestion led to the discovery of Neptune.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neptune#Discovery
Sean: I expect most of the revisions about both Uranus & Neptune are due to observations by the Voyager space probe and the telescopes in space. I would really like to see a spacecraft with the Kilopower nuclear reactor tested. So we can have spacecraft with a powerful electric drive and powerful instruments like ice penetrating radar to investigate the outer planets.
I was thinking of Uranus.
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