As the planet farthest from the sun, Neptune’s largest moon, Triton, is significantly larger than the other satellite objects that orbit the planet, and Triton is the only object that orbits in its own direction, per the outlet.<\/p>\n
Astronomers have suspected that Triton came from the Kuiper belt, “a doughnut-shaped region of icy objects beyond the orbit of Neptune,” according to NASA<\/a>. The Kuiper belt is also home to Pluto and “most of the known dwarf planets and some comets.”<\/p>\n However, scientists could not connect Nereid, another of Neptune’s irregular moons, to the Kuiper belt due in part to its vibrant blue hue, as most objects from the belt tend to be red in color, according to a new study published in Science Advances on Wednesday, May 20. Nereid is also believed to be 210 miles in diameter.<\/p>\n When a team led by Matthew Belyakov, a planetary scientist at the California Institute of Technology, used the James Webb Space Telescope to look at Nereid, they reported in their findings that the moon was “inconsistent with its suggested captured origin” from the Kuiper belt.<\/p>\n Instead, Belyakov’s team proposes that Neptune once had a more regular set of moons that were largely destroyed in an ancient cataclysmic event, leaving Nereid as the lone survivor.<\/p>\n \u201cThe other survivors are Neptune\u2019s innermost moons, but they are not intact because we have images of them from Voyager, and they look like disrupted rubble piles,” Belyakov told CNN. “So they are surviving material from the initial system, but not fully intact moons.\u201d<\/p>\n Neptune To fully understand the origin of Nereid, further observation via a spacecraft would be required, according to The New York Times.<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a criminally understudied moon,\u201d Dr. Belyakov told the outlet.<\/p>\n Never miss a story \u2014 sign up for PEOPLE’s free daily newsletter<\/a> to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.<\/p>\n Nereid takes its name from the sea nymphs of Greek mythology, who served Neptune, the god of the sea, much like the moon orbits the planet, per CNN.<\/p>\n![\"NeptuneCredit:](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/79e50e3a75246879107c92166e9f40e8.jpeg\"\/)
<\/p>\n
Credit: Space Frontiers\/Hulton Archive\/Getty<\/p>\n