The outermost moon of Neptune. Nereid was discovered
on May 1, 1949 by Gerard P. Kuiper. It
is named after the Nereids, the 50 sea-nymph daughters of Nereus, a Greek
sea god and is also known as Neptune II. Nereid has the most eccentric orbit
of any satellite in the Solar System, taking it from about 1,353,600 km
to 9,623,700 km from Neptune. This unusual orbit suggests that Nereid may
be a captured asteroid or Kuiper Belt object, or possibly that it was perturbed
during the capture of Neptune's largest moon Triton.
Nereid's surface is somewhat more reflective than that of our own Moon and
about twice as reflective as that of the six inner moons of Neptune.
| Voyager 2 view of Nereid obtained on Aug. 24, 1989
at a distance of 4.7 million km (2.9 million miles). With a resolution
of 43 km (26.6 miles) per pixel, this image has sufficient detail
to show the overall size and albedo.
||1949, by Gerard Kuiper
||5,513,000 km (3,426,000 miles)
||340 km (211 miles)
||32.55º (to Neptune's equator)