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Of Voyager’s six discoveries, all but Proteus orbit Neptune in less time than it takes the planet to rotate. Hence, to an observer positioned near Neptune’s cloud tops, these five would appear to rise in the west and set in the east. Voyager observed two of its discoveries, Proteus and Larissa, closely enough to detect both their size and approximate shape. Both bodies are irregular in shape and appear to have heavily cratered surfaces. The sizes of the other four are estimated from a combination of distant images and their brightnesses, based on the assumption that they reflect about as much light as Proteus and Larissa—about 7 percent. Proteus, with a mean radius of about 208 km (129 miles), is a little larger than Nereid, with a mean radius of about 170 km (106 miles). The other five moons are much smaller, each having a mean radius of less than 100 km (60 miles).

Voyager did not observe Nereid at close range, but data from the probe indicate that it has a nearly spherical shape. Voyager detected no large variations in brightness as Nereid rotated. Although the spacecraft was unable to determine a rotation period, the moon’s highly elliptical orbit makes it unlikely that it is in synchronous rotation—i.e., that its rotation and orbital periods are equal. The rotation period of Triton is synchronous, and those of Neptune’s other inner moons are probably synchronous or very nearly so.


Triton is similar in size, density, and surface composition to the dwarf planet Pluto. Its highly inclined, retrograde orbit suggests that it is a captured object, which perhaps formed originally, like Pluto, as an independent icy planetesimal in the outer solar system’s Kuiper belt. Its original orbit would have been highly eccentric, but tidal interactions between Triton and Neptune—cyclic deformations in each body caused by the gravitational attraction of the other—eventually would have reshaped its path around Neptune into a circle. The process of Triton’s capture and circularization of its orbit would have severely disrupted any previously existing system of moons that had formed along with Neptune from a disk of protoplanetary material. Nereid’s radical orbit may be one consequence of this process (although the possibility that Nereid too is a captured object has not been ruled out). Moons that were in orbit between Proteus and Nereid would have been ejected from the Neptunian system, thrown into Neptune itself, or absorbed by the molten Triton. Even those moons orbiting closer to Neptune would not have escaped some disruption. The present orbits of Naiad through Proteus (see table) are probably very different from their original orbits, and these moons may be only fragments of the original bodies that formed with Neptune. Subsequent bombardment by Neptune-orbiting debris and by meteoroids from interplanetary space may have further altered their sizes, shapes, and orbits; for example, Hippocamp likely formed from an impact that almost disrupted Proteus.

Neptune also has a population of Trojan asteroids, which occupy the stable Lagrangian points 60° ahead (L4) and behind (L5) in its orbit around the Sun. The first Neptune Trojan to be discovered, 2001 QR322, was found in 2001. As of 2019, 22 Neptune Trojan asteroids were known—19 at L4 and 3 at L5.

The ring system
Neptune's ring system
Neptune's ring system
Evidence that Neptune has one or more rings arose in the mid-1980s when stellar occultation studies from Earth occasionally showed a brief dip in the star’s brightness just before or after the planet passed in front of it. Because dips were seen only in some studies and never symmetrically on both sides of the planet, scientists concluded that any rings present do not completely encircle Neptune but instead have the form of partial rings, or ring arcs.


Images from Voyager 2, however, revealed a system of six rings, each of which in fact fully surrounds Neptune. The putative arcs turned out to be bright regions in the outermost ring, named Adams, where the density of ring particles is particularly high. Although rings also encircle each of the other three giant planets, none displays the striking clumpiness of Adams. The arcs are found within a 45° segment of the ring. From leading to trailing, the most prominent are named Courage, Liberté, Egalité 1, Egalité 2, and Fraternité. They range in length from about 1,000 km (600 miles) to more than 10,000 km (6,000 miles). Although the moon Galatea, which orbits just planetward of the inner edge of Adams, may gravitationally interact with the ring to trap ring particles temporarily in such arclike regions, collisions between ring particles should eventually spread the constituent material relatively uniformly around the ring. Consequently, it is suspected that the event that supplied the material for Adams’s enigmatic arcs—perhaps the breakup of a small moon—occurred within the past few thousand years.


The other five known rings of Neptune—Galle, Le Verrier, Lassell, Arago, and Galatea, in order of increasing distance from the planet—lack the nonuniformity in density exhibited by Adams. Le Verrier, which is about 110 km (70 miles) in radial width, closely resembles the nonarc regions of Adams. Similar to the relationship between the moon Galatea and the ring Adams, the moon Despina orbits Neptune just planetward of the ring Le Verrier. Each moon may gravitationally repel particles near the inner edge of its respective ring, acting as a shepherd moon to keep ring material from spreading inward. (For fuller treatments of shepherding effects, see Saturn: Moons: Orbital and rotational dynamics; Uranus: The ring system.)


Galle, the innermost ring, is much broader and fainter than either Adams or Le Verrier, possibly owing to the absence of a nearby moon that could provide a strong shepherding effect. Lassell consists of a faint plateau of ring material that extends outward from Le Verrier about halfway to Adams. Arago is the name used to distinguish a narrow, relatively bright region at the outer edge of Lassell. Galatea is the name generally used to refer to a faint ring of material spread all along the orbit of the moon Galatea. Characteristics of the rings are summarized in the table.

Rings of Neptune
name distance from centre of planet (km) observed width (km) comments
Galle 41,900 2,000 indistinct edges
Le Verrier 53,200 110 flanked at inner edge by moon Despina
Lassell 55,200 4,000 bounded by rings Le Verrier and Arago
Arago 57,200 less than 100 somewhat brighter outer edge of broad Lassell ring
Galatea 61,950 less than 100 co-orbital with moon Galatea
Adams 62,930 15 possesses bright arcs; flanked at inner edge by moon Galatea

None of Neptune’s rings were detected from scattering effects on Voyager’s radio signal propagating through the rings, which indicates that they are nearly devoid of particles in the centimetre size range or larger. The fact that the rings were most visible in Voyager images when backlit by sunlight implies that they are largely populated by dust-sized particles, which scatter light forward much better than back toward the Sun and Earth. Their chemical makeup is not known, but, like the rings of Uranus, the surfaces of Neptune’s ring particles (and possibly the particles in their entirety) may be composed of radiation-darkened methane ices.

The suspected youthfulness of Adams’s ring arcs and the arguments offered can be extended to Neptune’s rings in general. The present rings are narrow, and scientists have found it difficult to explain how the orbits of the known moons can effectively confine the natural radial spreading of the rings. This has led many to speculate that Neptune’s present rings may be much younger than the planet itself, perhaps substantially less than a million years. The present ring system may be markedly different from any that existed a million years ago. It is even possible that the next spacecraft to visit Neptune’s rings will find a system greatly evolved from the one Voyager 2 imaged in 1989.
Of Voyager’s six discoveries, all but Proteus orbit Neptune in less time than it takes the planet to rotate. Hence, to an observer positioned near Neptune’s cloud tops, these five would appear to rise in the west and set in the east. Voyager observed two of its discoveries, Proteus and Larissa, closely enough to detect both their size and approximate shape. Both bodies are irregular in shape and appear to have heavily cratered surfaces. The sizes of the other four are estimated from a combination of distant images and their brightnesses, based on the assumption that they reflect about as much light as Proteus and Larissa—about 7 percent. Proteus, with a mean radius of about 208 km (129 miles), is a little larger than Nereid, with a mean radius of about 170 km (106 miles). The other five moons are much smaller, each having a mean radius of less than 100 km (60 miles).

Voyager did not observe Nereid at close range, but data from the probe indicate that it has a nearly spherical shape. Voyager detected no large variations in brightness as Nereid rotated. Although the spacecraft was unable to determine a rotation period, the moon’s highly elliptical orbit makes it unlikely that it is in synchronous rotation—i.e., that its rotation and orbital periods are equal. The rotation period of Triton is synchronous, and those of Neptune’s other inner moons are probably synchronous or very nearly so.


Triton is similar in size, density, and surface composition to the dwarf planet Pluto. Its highly inclined, retrograde orbit suggests that it is a captured object, which perhaps formed originally, like Pluto, as an independent icy planetesimal in the outer solar system’s Kuiper belt. Its original orbit would have been highly eccentric, but tidal interactions between Triton and Neptune—cyclic deformations in each body caused by the gravitational attraction of the other—eventually would have reshaped its path around Neptune into a circle. The process of Triton’s capture and circularization of its orbit would have severely disrupted any previously existing system of moons that had formed along with Neptune from a disk of protoplanetary material. Nereid’s radical orbit may be one consequence of this process (although the possibility that Nereid too is a captured object has not been ruled out). Moons that were in orbit between Proteus and Nereid would have been ejected from the Neptunian system, thrown into Neptune itself, or absorbed by the molten Triton. Even those moons orbiting closer to Neptune would not have escaped some disruption. The present orbits of Naiad through Proteus (see table) are probably very different from their original orbits, and these moons may be only fragments of the original bodies that formed with Neptune. Subsequent bombardment by Neptune-orbiting debris and by meteoroids from interplanetary space may have further altered their sizes, shapes, and orbits; for example, Hippocamp likely formed from an impact that almost disrupted Proteus.

Neptune also has a population of Trojan asteroids, which occupy the stable Lagrangian points 60° ahead (L4) and behind (L5) in its orbit around the Sun. The first Neptune Trojan to be discovered, 2001 QR322, was found in 2001. As of 2019, 22 Neptune Trojan asteroids were known—19 at L4 and 3 at L5.

The ring system
Neptune's ring system
Neptune's ring system
Evidence that Neptune has one or more rings arose in the mid-1980s when stellar occultation studies from Earth occasionally showed a brief dip in the star’s brightness just before or after the planet passed in front of it. Because dips were seen only in some studies and never symmetrically on both sides of the planet, scientists concluded that any rings present do not completely encircle Neptune but instead have the form of partial rings, or ring arcs.


Images from Voyager 2, however, revealed a system of six rings, each of which in fact fully surrounds Neptune. The putative arcs turned out to be bright regions in the outermost ring, named Adams, where the density of ring particles is particularly high. Although rings also encircle each of the other three giant planets, none displays the striking clumpiness of Adams. The arcs are found within a 45° segment of the ring. From leading to trailing, the most prominent are named Courage, Liberté, Egalité 1, Egalité 2, and Fraternité. They range in length from about 1,000 km (600 miles) to more than 10,000 km (6,000 miles). Although the moon Galatea, which orbits just planetward of the inner edge of Adams, may gravitationally interact with the ring to trap ring particles temporarily in such arclike regions, collisions between ring particles should eventually spread the constituent material relatively uniformly around the ring. Consequently, it is suspected that the event that supplied the material for Adams’s enigmatic arcs—perhaps the breakup of a small moon—occurred within the past few thousand years.


The other five known rings of Neptune—Galle, Le Verrier, Lassell, Arago, and Galatea, in order of increasing distance from the planet—lack the nonuniformity in density exhibited by Adams. Le Verrier, which is about 110 km (70 miles) in radial width, closely resembles the nonarc regions of Adams. Similar to the relationship between the moon Galatea and the ring Adams, the moon Despina orbits Neptune just planetward of the ring Le Verrier. Each moon may gravitationally repel particles near the inner edge of its respective ring, acting as a shepherd moon to keep ring material from spreading inward. (For fuller treatments of shepherding effects, see Saturn: Moons: Orbital and rotational dynamics; Uranus: The ring system.)


Galle, the innermost ring, is much broader and fainter than either Adams or Le Verrier, possibly owing to the absence of a nearby moon that could provide a strong shepherding effect. Lassell consists of a faint plateau of ring material that extends outward from Le Verrier about halfway to Adams. Arago is the name used to distinguish a narrow, relatively bright region at the outer edge of Lassell. Galatea is the name generally used to refer to a faint ring of material spread all along the orbit of the moon Galatea. Characteristics of the rings are summarized in the table.

Rings of Neptune
name distance from centre of planet (km) observed width (km) comments
Galle 41,900 2,000 indistinct edges
Le Verrier 53,200 110 flanked at inner edge by moon Despina
Lassell 55,200 4,000 bounded by rings Le Verrier and Arago
Arago 57,200 less than 100 somewhat brighter outer edge of broad Lassell ring
Galatea 61,950 less than 100 co-orbital with moon Galatea
Adams 62,930 15 possesses bright arcs; flanked at inner edge by moon Galatea

None of Neptune’s rings were detected from scattering effects on Voyager’s radio signal propagating through the rings, which indicates that they are nearly devoid of particles in the centimetre size range or larger. The fact that the rings were most visible in Voyager images when backlit by sunlight implies that they are largely populated by dust-sized particles, which scatter light forward much better than back toward the Sun and Earth. Their chemical makeup is not known, but, like the rings of Uranus, the surfaces of Neptune’s ring particles (and possibly the particles in their entirety) may be composed of radiation-darkened methane ices.

The suspected youthfulness of Adams’s ring arcs and the arguments offered can be extended to Neptune’s rings in general. The present rings are narrow, and scientists have found it difficult to explain how the orbits of the known moons can effectively confine the natural radial spreading of the rings. This has led many to speculate that Neptune’s present rings may be much younger than the planet itself, perhaps substantially less than a million years. The present ring system may be markedly different from any that existed a million years ago. It is even possible that the next spacecraft to visit Neptune’s rings will find a system greatly evolved from the one Voyager 2 imaged in 1989.

Of Voyager’s six discoveries, all but Proteus orbit Neptune in less time than it takes the planet to rotate. Hence, to an observer positioned near Neptune’s cloud tops, these five would appear to rise in the west and set in the east. Voyager observed two of its discoveries, Proteus and Larissa, closely enough to detect both their size and approximate shape. Both bodies are irregular in shape and appear to have heavily cratered surfaces. The sizes of the other four are estimated from a combination of distant images and their brightnesses, based on the assumption that they reflect about as much light as Proteus and Larissa—about 7 percent. Proteus, with a mean radius of about 208 km (129 miles), is a little larger than Nereid, with a mean radius of about 170 km (106 miles). The other five moons are much smaller, each having a mean radius of less than 100 km (60 miles).

Voyager did not observe Nereid at close range, but data from the probe indicate that it has a nearly spherical shape. Voyager detected no large variations in brightness as Nereid rotated. Although the spacecraft was unable to determine a rotation period, the moon’s highly elliptical orbit makes it unlikely that it is in synchronous rotation—i.e., that its rotation and orbital periods are equal. The rotation period of Triton is synchronous, and those of Neptune’s other inner moons are probably synchronous or very nearly so.


Triton is similar in size, density, and surface composition to the dwarf planet Pluto. Its highly inclined, retrograde orbit suggests that it is a captured object, which perhaps formed originally, like Pluto, as an independent icy planetesimal in the outer solar system’s Kuiper belt. Its original orbit would have been highly eccentric, but tidal interactions between Triton and Neptune—cyclic deformations in each body caused by the gravitational attraction of the other—eventually would have reshaped its path around Neptune into a circle. The process of Triton’s capture and circularization of its orbit would have severely disrupted any previously existing system of moons that had formed along with Neptune from a disk of protoplanetary material. Nereid’s radical orbit may be one consequence of this process (although the possibility that Nereid too is a captured object has not been ruled out). Moons that were in orbit between Proteus and Nereid would have been ejected from the Neptunian system, thrown into Neptune itself, or absorbed by the molten Triton. Even those moons orbiting closer to Neptune would not have escaped some disruption. The present orbits of Naiad through Proteus (see table) are probably very different from their original orbits, and these moons may be only fragments of the original bodies that formed with Neptune. Subsequent bombardment by Neptune-orbiting debris and by meteoroids from interplanetary space may have further altered their sizes, shapes, and orbits; for example, Hippocamp likely formed from an impact that almost disrupted Proteus.

Neptune also has a population of Trojan asteroids, which occupy the stable Lagrangian points 60° ahead (L4) and behind (L5) in its orbit around the Sun. The first Neptune Trojan to be discovered, 2001 QR322, was found in 2001. As of 2019, 22 Neptune Trojan asteroids were known—19 at L4 and 3 at L5.

The ring system
Neptune's ring system
Neptune's ring system
Evidence that Neptune has one or more rings arose in the mid-1980s when stellar occultation studies from Earth occasionally showed a brief dip in the star’s brightness just before or after the planet passed in front of it. Because dips were seen only in some studies and never symmetrically on both sides of the planet, scientists concluded that any rings present do not completely encircle Neptune but instead have the form of partial rings, or ring arcs.


Images from Voyager 2, however, revealed a system of six rings, each of which in fact fully surrounds Neptune. The putative arcs turned out to be bright regions in the outermost ring, named Adams, where the density of ring particles is particularly high. Although rings also encircle each of the other three giant planets, none displays the striking clumpiness of Adams. The arcs are found within a 45° segment of the ring. From leading to trailing, the most prominent are named Courage, Liberté, Egalité 1, Egalité 2, and Fraternité. They range in length from about 1,000 km (600 miles) to more than 10,000 km (6,000 miles). Although the moon Galatea, which orbits just planetward of the inner edge of Adams, may gravitationally interact with the ring to trap ring particles temporarily in such arclike regions, collisions between ring particles should eventually spread the constituent material relatively uniformly around the ring. Consequently, it is suspected that the event that supplied the material for Adams’s enigmatic arcs—perhaps the breakup of a small moon—occurred within the past few thousand years.


The other five known rings of Neptune—Galle, Le Verrier, Lassell, Arago, and Galatea, in order of increasing distance from the planet—lack the nonuniformity in density exhibited by Adams. Le Verrier, which is about 110 km (70 miles) in radial width, closely resembles the nonarc regions of Adams. Similar to the relationship between the moon Galatea and the ring Adams, the moon Despina orbits Neptune just planetward of the ring Le Verrier. Each moon may gravitationally repel particles near the inner edge of its respective ring, acting as a shepherd moon to keep ring material from spreading inward. (For fuller treatments of shepherding effects, see Saturn: Moons: Orbital and rotational dynamics; Uranus: The ring system.)


Galle, the innermost ring, is much broader and fainter than either Adams or Le Verrier, possibly owing to the absence of a nearby moon that could provide a strong shepherding effect. Lassell consists of a faint plateau of ring material that extends outward from Le Verrier about halfway to Adams. Arago is the name used to distinguish a narrow, relatively bright region at the outer edge of Lassell. Galatea is the name generally used to refer to a faint ring of material spread all along the orbit of the moon Galatea. Characteristics of the rings are summarized in the table.

Rings of Neptune
name distance from centre of planet (km) observed width (km) comments
Galle 41,900 2,000 indistinct edges
Le Verrier 53,200 110 flanked at inner edge by moon Despina
Lassell 55,200 4,000 bounded by rings Le Verrier and Arago
Arago 57,200 less than 100 somewhat brighter outer edge of broad Lassell ring
Galatea 61,950 less than 100 co-orbital with moon Galatea
Adams 62,930 15 possesses bright arcs; flanked at inner edge by moon Galatea

None of Neptune’s rings were detected from scattering effects on Voyager’s radio signal propagating through the rings, which indicates that they are nearly devoid of particles in the centimetre size range or larger. The fact that the rings were most visible in Voyager images when backlit by sunlight implies that they are largely populated by dust-sized particles, which scatter light forward much better than back toward the Sun and Earth. Their chemical makeup is not known, but, like the rings of Uranus, the surfaces of Neptune’s ring particles (and possibly the particles in their entirety) may be composed of radiation-darkened methane ices.

The suspected youthfulness of Adams’s ring arcs and the arguments offered can be extended to Neptune’s rings in general. The present rings are narrow, and scientists have found it difficult to explain how the orbits of the known moons can effectively confine the natural radial spreading of the rings. This has led many to speculate that Neptune’s present rings may be much younger than the planet itself, perhaps substantially less than a million years. The present ring system may be markedly different from any that existed a million years ago. It is even possible that the next spacecraft to visit Neptune’s rings will find a system greatly evolved from the one Voyager 2 imaged in 1989.hOf Voyager’s six discoveries, all but Proteus orbit Neptune in less time than it takes the planet to rotate. Hence, to an observer positioned near Neptune’s cloud tops, these five would appear to rise in the west and set in the east. Voyager observed two of its discoveries, Proteus and Larissa, closely enough to detect both their size and approximate shape. Both bodies are irregular in shape and appear to have heavily cratered surfaces. The sizes of the other four are estimated from a combination of distant images and their brightnesses, based on the assumption that they reflect about as much light as Proteus and Larissa—about 7 percent. Proteus, with a mean radius of about 208 km (129 miles), is a little larger than Nereid, with a mean radius of about 170 km (106 miles). The other five moons are much smaller, each having a mean radius of less than 100 km (60 miles).

Voyager did not observe Nereid at close range, but data from the probe indicate that it has a nearly spherical shape. Voyager detected no large variations in brightness as Nereid rotated. Although the spacecraft was unable to determine a rotation period, the moon’s highly elliptical orbit makes it unlikely that it is in synchronous rotation—i.e., that its rotation and orbital periods are equal. The rotation period of Triton is synchronous, and those of Neptune’s other inner moons are probably synchronous or very nearly so.


Triton is similar in size, density, and surface composition to the dwarf planet Pluto. Its highly inclined, retrograde orbit suggests that it is a captured object, which perhaps formed originally, like Pluto, as an independent icy planetesimal in the outer solar system’s Kuiper belt. Its original orbit would have been highly eccentric, but tidal interactions between Triton and Neptune—cyclic deformations in each body caused by the gravitational attraction of the other—eventually would have reshaped its path around Neptune into a circle. The process of Triton’s capture and circularization of its orbit would have severely disrupted any previously existing system of moons that had formed along with Neptune from a disk of protoplanetary material. Nereid’s radical orbit may be one consequence of this process (although the possibility that Nereid too is a captured object has not been ruled out). Moons that were in orbit between Proteus and Nereid would have been ejected from the Neptunian system, thrown into Neptune itself, or absorbed by the molten Triton. Even those moons orbiting closer to Neptune would not have escaped some disruption. The present orbits of Naiad through Proteus (see table) are probably very different from their original orbits, and these moons may be only fragments of the original bodies that formed with Neptune. Subsequent bombardment by Neptune-orbiting debris and by meteoroids from interplanetary space may have further altered their sizes, shapes, and orbits; for example, Hippocamp likely formed from an impact that almost disrupted Proteus.

Neptune also has a population of Trojan asteroids, which occupy the stable Lagrangian points 60° ahead (L4) and behind (L5) in its orbit around the Sun. The first Neptune Trojan to be discovered, 2001 QR322, was found in 2001. As of 2019, 22 Neptune Trojan asteroids were known—19 at L4 and 3 at L5.

The ring system
Neptune's ring system
Neptune's ring system
Evidence that Neptune has one or more rings arose in the mid-1980s when stellar occultation studies from Earth occasionally showed a brief dip in the star’s brightness just before or after the planet passed in front of it. Because dips were seen only in some studies and never symmetrically on both sides of the planet, scientists concluded that any rings present do not completely encircle Neptune but instead have the form of partial rings, or ring arcs.


Images from Voyager 2, however, revealed a system of six rings, each of which in fact fully surrounds Neptune. The putative arcs turned out to be bright regions in the outermost ring, named Adams, where the density of ring particles is particularly high. Although rings also encircle each of the other three giant planets, none displays the striking clumpiness of Adams. The arcs are found within a 45° segment of the ring. From leading to trailing, the most prominent are named Courage, Liberté, Egalité 1, Egalité 2, and Fraternité. They range in length from about 1,000 km (600 miles) to more than 10,000 km (6,000 miles). Although the moon Galatea, which orbits just planetward of the inner edge of Adams, may gravitationally interact with the ring to trap ring particles temporarily in such arclike regions, collisions between ring particles should eventually spread the constituent material relatively uniformly around the ring. Consequently, it is suspected that the event that supplied the material for Adams’s enigmatic arcs—perhaps the breakup of a small moon—occurred within the past few thousand years.


The other five known rings of Neptune—Galle, Le Verrier, Lassell, Arago, and Galatea, in order of increasing distance from the planet—lack the nonuniformity in density exhibited by Adams. Le Verrier, which is about 110 km (70 miles) in radial width, closely resembles the nonarc regions of Adams. Similar to the relationship between the moon Galatea and the ring Adams, the moon Despina orbits Neptune just planetward of the ring Le Verrier. Each moon may gravitationally repel particles near the inner edge of its respective ring, acting as a shepherd moon to keep ring material from spreading inward. (For fuller treatments of shepherding effects, see Saturn: Moons: Orbital and rotational dynamics; Uranus: The ring system.)


Galle, the innermost ring, is much broader and fainter than either Adams or Le Verrier, possibly owing to the absence of a nearby moon that could provide a strong shepherding effect. Lassell consists of a faint plateau of ring material that extends outward from Le Verrier about halfway to Adams. Arago is the name used to distinguish a narrow, relatively bright region at the outer edge of Lassell. Galatea is the name generally used to refer to a faint ring of material spread all along the orbit of the moon Galatea. Characteristics of the rings are summarized in the table.

Rings of Neptune
name distance from centre of planet (km) observed width (km) comments
Galle 41,900 2,000 indistinct edges
Le Verrier 53,200 110 flanked at inner edge by moon Despina
Lassell 55,200 4,000 bounded by rings Le Verrier and Arago
Arago 57,200 less than 100 somewhat brighter outer edge of broad Lassell ring
Galatea 61,950 less than 100 co-orbital with moon Galatea
Adams 62,930 15 possesses bright arcs; flanked at inner edge by moon Galatea

None of Neptune’s rings were detected from scattering effects on Voyager’s radio signal propagating through the rings, which indicates that they are nearly devoid of particles in the centimetre size range or larger. The fact that the rings were most visible in Voyager images when backlit by sunlight implies that they are largely populated by dust-sized particles, which scatter light forward much better than back toward the Sun and Earth. Their chemical makeup is not known, but, like the rings of Uranus, the surfaces of Neptune’s ring particles (and possibly the particles in their entirety) may be composed of radiation-darkened methane ices.

The suspected youthfulness of Adams’s ring arcs and the arguments offered can be extended to Neptune’s rings in general. The present rings are narrow, and scientists have found it difficult to explain how the orbits of the known moons can effectively confine the natural radial spreading of the rings. This has led many to speculate that Neptune’s present rings may be much younger than the planet itself, perhaps substantially less than a million years. The present ring system may be markedly different from any that existed a million years ago. It is even possible that the next spacecraft to visit Neptune’s rings will find a system greatly evolved from the one Voyager 2 imaged in 1989.
Of Voyager’s six discoveries, all but Proteus orbit Neptune in less time than it takes the planet to rotate. Hence, to an observer positioned near Neptune’s cloud tops, these five would appear to rise in the west and set in the east. Voyager observed two of its discoveries, Proteus and Larissa, closely enough to detect both their size and approximate shape. Both bodies are irregular in shape and appear to have heavily cratered surfaces. The sizes of the other four are estimated from a combination of distant images and their brightnesses, based on the assumption that they reflect about as much light as Proteus and Larissa—about 7 percent. Proteus, with a mean radius of about 208 km (129 miles), is a little larger than Nereid, with a mean radius of about 170 km (106 miles). The other five moons are much smaller, each having a mean radius of less than 100 km (60 miles).

Voyager did not observe Nereid at close range, but data from the probe indicate that it has a nearly spherical shape. Voyager detected no large variations in brightness as Nereid rotated. Although the spacecraft was unable to determine a rotation period, the moon’s highly elliptical orbit makes it unlikely that it is in synchronous rotation—i.e., that its rotation and orbital periods are equal. The rotation period of Triton is synchronous, and those of Neptune’s other inner moons are probably synchronous or very nearly so.


Triton is similar in size, density, and surface composition to the dwarf planet Pluto. Its highly inclined, retrograde orbit suggests that it is a captured object, which perhaps formed originally, like Pluto, as an independent icy planetesimal in the outer solar system’s Kuiper belt. Its original orbit would have been highly eccentric, but tidal interactions between Triton and Neptune—cyclic deformations in each body caused by the gravitational attraction of the other—eventually would have reshaped its path around Neptune into a circle. The process of Triton’s capture and circularization of its orbit would have severely disrupted any previously existing system of moons that had formed along with Neptune from a disk of protoplanetary material. Nereid’s radical orbit may be one consequence of this process (although the possibility that Nereid too is a captured object has not been ruled out). Moons that were in orbit between Proteus and Nereid would have been ejected from the Neptunian system, thrown into Neptune itself, or absorbed by the molten Triton. Even those moons orbiting closer to Neptune would not have escaped some disruption. The present orbits of Naiad through Proteus (see table) are probably very different from their original orbits, and these moons may be only fragments of the original bodies that formed with Neptune. Subsequent bombardment by Neptune-orbiting debris and by meteoroids from interplanetary space may have further altered their sizes, shapes, and orbits; for example, Hippocamp likely formed from an impact that almost disrupted Proteus.

Neptune also has a population of Trojan asteroids, which occupy the stable Lagrangian points 60° ahead (L4) and behind (L5) in its orbit around the Sun. The first Neptune Trojan to be discovered, 2001 QR322, was found in 2001. As of 2019, 22 Neptune Trojan asteroids were known—19 at L4 and 3 at L5.

The ring system
Neptune's ring system
Neptune's ring system
Evidence that Neptune has one or more rings arose in the mid-1980s when stellar occultation studies from Earth occasionally showed a brief dip in the star’s brightness just before or after the planet passed in front of it. Because dips were seen only in some studies and never symmetrically on both sides of the planet, scientists concluded that any rings present do not completely encircle Neptune but instead have the form of partial rings, or ring arcs.


Images from Voyager 2, however, revealed a system of six rings, each of which in fact fully surrounds Neptune. The putative arcs turned out to be bright regions in the outermost ring, named Adams, where the density of ring particles is particularly high. Although rings also encircle each of the other three giant planets, none displays the striking clumpiness of Adams. The arcs are found within a 45° segment of the ring. From leading to trailing, the most prominent are named Courage, Liberté, Egalité 1, Egalité 2, and Fraternité. They range in length from about 1,000 km (600 miles) to more than 10,000 km (6,000 miles). Although the moon Galatea, which orbits just planetward of the inner edge of Adams, may gravitationally interact with the ring to trap ring particles temporarily in such arclike regions, collisions between ring particles should eventually spread the constituent material relatively uniformly around the ring. Consequently, it is suspected that the event that supplied the material for Adams’s enigmatic arcs—perhaps the breakup of a small moon—occurred within the past few thousand years.


The other five known rings of Neptune—Galle, Le Verrier, Lassell, Arago, and Galatea, in order of increasing distance from the planet—lack the nonuniformity in density exhibited by Adams. Le Verrier, which is about 110 km (70 miles) in radial width, closely resembles the nonarc regions of Adams. Similar to the relationship between the moon Galatea and the ring Adams, the moon Despina orbits Neptune just planetward of the ring Le Verrier. Each moon may gravitationally repel particles near the inner edge of its respective ring, acting as a shepherd moon to keep ring material from spreading inward. (For fuller treatments of shepherding effects, see Saturn: Moons: Orbital and rotational dynamics; Uranus: The ring system.)


Galle, the innermost ring, is much broader and fainter than either Adams or Le Verrier, possibly owing to the absence of a nearby moon that could provide a strong shepherding effect. Lassell consists of a faint plateau of ring material that extends outward from Le Verrier about halfway to Adams. Arago is the name used to distinguish a narrow, relatively bright region at the outer edge of Lassell. Galatea is the name generally used to refer to a faint ring of material spread all along the orbit of the moon Galatea. Characteristics of the rings are summarized in the table.

Rings of Neptune
name distance from centre of planet (km) observed width (km) comments
Galle 41,900 2,000 indistinct edges
Le Verrier 53,200 110 flanked at inner edge by moon Despina
Lassell 55,200 4,000 bounded by rings Le Verrier and Arago
Arago 57,200 less than 100 somewhat brighter outer edge of broad Lassell ring
Galatea 61,950 less than 100 co-orbital with moon Galatea
Adams 62,930 15 possesses bright arcs; flanked at inner edge by moon Galatea

None of Neptune’s rings were detected from scattering effects on Voyager’s radio signal propagating through the rings, which indicates that they are nearly devoid of particles in the centimetre size range or larger. The fact that the rings were most visible in Voyager images when backlit by sunlight implies that they are largely populated by dust-sized particles, which scatter light forward much better than back toward the Sun and Earth. Their chemical makeup is not known, but, like the rings of Uranus, the surfaces of Neptune’s ring particles (and possibly the particles in their entirety) may be composed of radiation-darkened methane ices.

The suspected youthfulness of Adams’s ring arcs and the arguments offered can be extended to Neptune’s rings in general. The present rings are narrow, and scientists have found it difficult to explain how the orbits of the known moons can effectively confine the natural radial spreading of the rings. This has led many to speculate that Neptune’s present rings may be much younger than the planet itself, perhaps substantially less than a million years. The present ring system may be markedly different from any that existed a million years ago. It is even possible that the next spacecraft to visit Neptune’s rings will find a system greatly evolved from the one Voyager 2 imaged in 1989.
Of Voyager’s six discoveries, all but Proteus orbit Neptune in less time than it takes the planet to rotate. Hence, to an observer positioned near Neptune’s cloud tops, these five would appear to rise in the west and set in the east. Voyager observed two of its discoveries, Proteus and Larissa, closely enough to detect both their size and approximate shape. Both bodies are irregular in shape and appear to have heavily cratered surfaces. The sizes of the other four are estimated from a combination of distant images and their brightnesses, based on the assumption that they reflect about as much light as Proteus and Larissa—about 7 percent. Proteus, with a mean radius of about 208 km (129 miles), is a little larger than Nereid, with a mean radius of about 170 km (106 miles). The other five moons are much smaller, each having a mean radius of less than 100 km (60 miles).

Voyager did not observe Nereid at close range, but data from the probe indicate that it has a nearly spherical shape. Voyager detected no large variations in brightness as Nereid rotated. Although the spacecraft was unable to determine a rotation period, the moon’s highly elliptical orbit makes it unlikely that it is in synchronous rotation—i.e., that its rotation and orbital periods are equal. The rotation period of Triton is synchronous, and those of Neptune’s other inner moons are probably synchronous or very nearly so.


Triton is similar in size, density, and surface composition to the dwarf planet Pluto. Its highly inclined, retrograde orbit suggests that it is a captured object, which perhaps formed originally, like Pluto, as an independent icy planetesimal in the outer solar system’s Kuiper belt. Its original orbit would have been highly eccentric, but tidal interactions between Triton and Neptune—cyclic deformations in each body caused by the gravitational attraction of the other—eventually would have reshaped its path around Neptune into a circle. The process of Triton’s capture and circularization of its orbit would have severely disrupted any previously existing system of moons that had formed along with Neptune from a disk of protoplanetary material. Nereid’s radical orbit may be one consequence of this process (although the possibility that Nereid too is a captured object has not been ruled out). Moons that were in orbit between Proteus and Nereid would have been ejected from the Neptunian system, thrown into Neptune itself, or absorbed by the molten Triton. Even those moons orbiting closer to Neptune would not have escaped some disruption. The present orbits of Naiad through Proteus (see table) are probably very different from their original orbits, and these moons may be only fragments of the original bodies that formed with Neptune. Subsequent bombardment by Neptune-orbiting debris and by meteoroids from interplanetary space may have further altered their sizes, shapes, and orbits; for example, Hippocamp likely formed from an impact that almost disrupted Proteus.

Neptune also has a population of Trojan asteroids, which occupy the stable Lagrangian points 60° ahead (L4) and behind (L5) in its orbit around the Sun. The first Neptune Trojan to be discovered, 2001 QR322, was found in 2001. As of 2019, 22 Neptune Trojan asteroids were known—19 at L4 and 3 at L5.

The ring system
Neptune's ring system
Neptune's ring system
Evidence that Neptune has one or more rings arose in the mid-1980s when stellar occultation studies from Earth occasionally showed a brief dip in the star’s brightness just before or after the planet passed in front of it. Because dips were seen only in some studies and never symmetrically on both sides of the planet, scientists concluded that any rings present do not completely encircle Neptune but instead have the form of partial rings, or ring arcs.


Images from Voyager 2, however, revealed a system of six rings, each of which in fact fully surrounds Neptune. The putative arcs turned out to be bright regions in the outermost ring, named Adams, where the density of ring particles is particularly high. Although rings also encircle each of the other three giant planets, none displays the striking clumpiness of Adams. The arcs are found within a 45° segment of the ring. From leading to trailing, the most prominent are named Courage, Liberté, Egalité 1, Egalité 2, and Fraternité. They range in length from about 1,000 km (600 miles) to more than 10,000 km (6,000 miles). Although the moon Galatea, which orbits just planetward of the inner edge of Adams, may gravitationally interact with the ring to trap ring particles temporarily in such arclike regions, collisions between ring particles should eventually spread the constituent material relatively uniformly around the ring. Consequently, it is suspected that the event that supplied the material for Adams’s enigmatic arcs—perhaps the breakup of a small moon—occurred within the past few thousand years.


The other five known rings of Neptune—Galle, Le Verrier, Lassell, Arago, and Galatea, in order of increasing distance from the planet—lack the nonuniformity in density exhibited by Adams. Le Verrier, which is about 110 km (70 miles) in radial width, closely resembles the nonarc regions of Adams. Similar to the relationship between the moon Galatea and the ring Adams, the moon Despina orbits Neptune just planetward of the ring Le Verrier. Each moon may gravitationally repel particles near the inner edge of its respective ring, acting as a shepherd moon to keep ring material from spreading inward. (For fuller treatments of shepherding effects, see Saturn: Moons: Orbital and rotational dynamics; Uranus: The ring system.)


Galle, the innermost ring, is much broader and fainter than either Adams or Le Verrier, possibly owing to the absence of a nearby moon that could provide a strong shepherding effect. Lassell consists of a faint plateau of ring material that extends outward from Le Verrier about halfway to Adams. Arago is the name used to distinguish a narrow, relatively bright region at the outer edge of Lassell. Galatea is the name generally used to refer to a faint ring of material spread all along the orbit of the moon Galatea. Characteristics of the rings are summarized in the table.

Rings of Neptune
name distance from centre of planet (km) observed width (km) comments
Galle 41,900 2,000 indistinct edges
Le Verrier 53,200 110 flanked at inner edge by moon Despina
Lassell 55,200 4,000 bounded by rings Le Verrier and Arago
Arago 57,200 less than 100 somewhat brighter outer edge of broad Lassell ring
Galatea 61,950 less than 100 co-orbital with moon Galatea
Adams 62,930 15 possesses bright arcs; flanked at inner edge by moon Galatea

None of Neptune’s rings were detected from scattering effects on Voyager’s radio signal propagating through the rings, which indicates that they are nearly devoid of particles in the centimetre size range or larger. The fact that the rings were most visible in Voyager images when backlit by sunlight implies that they are largely populated by dust-sized particles, which scatter light forward much better than back toward the Sun and Earth. Their chemical makeup is not known, but, like the rings of Uranus, the surfaces of Neptune’s ring particles (and possibly the particles in their entirety) may be composed of radiation-darkened methane ices.

The suspected youthfulness of Adams’s ring arcs and the arguments offered can be extended to Neptune’s rings in general. The present rings are narrow, and scientists have found it difficult to explain how the orbits of the known moons can effectively confine the natural radial spreading of the rings. This has led many to speculate that Neptune’s present rings may be much younger than the planet itself, perhaps substantially less than a million years. The present ring system may be markedly different from any that existed a million years ago. It is even possible that the next spacecraft to visit Neptune’s rings will find a system greatly evolved from the one Voyager 2 imaged in 1989.

Of Voyager’s six discoveries, all but Proteus orbit Neptune in less time than it takes the planet to rotate. Hence, to an observer positioned near Neptune’s cloud tops, these five would appear to rise in the west and set in the east. Voyager observed two of its discoveries, Proteus and Larissa, closely enough to detect both their size and approximate shape. Both bodies are irregular in shape and appear to have heavily cratered surfaces. The sizes of the other four are estimated from a combination of distant images and their brightnesses, based on the assumption that they reflect about as much light as Proteus and Larissa—about 7 percent. Proteus, with a mean radius of about 208 km (129 miles), is a little larger than Nereid, with a mean radius of about 170 km (106 miles). The other five moons are much smaller, each having a mean radius of less than 100 km (60 miles).

Voyager did not observe Nereid at close range, but data from the probe indicate that it has a nearly spherical shape. Voyager detected no large variations in brightness as Nereid rotated. Although the spacecraft was unable to determine a rotation period, the moon’s highly elliptical orbit makes it unlikely that it is in synchronous rotation—i.e., that its rotation and orbital periods are equal. The rotation period of Triton is synchronous, and those of Neptune’s other inner moons are probably synchronous or very nearly so.


Triton is similar in size, density, and surface composition to the dwarf planet Pluto. Its highly inclined, retrograde orbit suggests that it is a captured object, which perhaps formed originally, like Pluto, as an independent icy planetesimal in the outer solar system’s Kuiper belt. Its original orbit would have been highly eccentric, but tidal interactions between Triton and Neptune—cyclic deformations in each body caused by the gravitational attraction of the other—eventually would have reshaped its path around Neptune into a circle. The process of Triton’s capture and circularization of its orbit would have severely disrupted any previously existing system of moons that had formed along with Neptune from a disk of protoplanetary material. Nereid’s radical orbit may be one consequence of this process (although the possibility that Nereid too is a captured object has not been ruled out). Moons that were in orbit between Proteus and Nereid would have been ejected from the Neptunian system, thrown into Neptune itself, or absorbed by the molten Triton. Even those moons orbiting closer to Neptune would not have escaped some disruption. The present orbits of Naiad through Proteus (see table) are probably very different from their original orbits, and these moons may be only fragments of the original bodies that formed with Neptune. Subsequent bombardment by Neptune-orbiting debris and by meteoroids from interplanetary space may have further altered their sizes, shapes, and orbits; for example, Hippocamp likely formed from an impact that almost disrupted Proteus.

Neptune also has a population of Trojan asteroids, which occupy the stable Lagrangian points 60° ahead (L4) and behind (L5) in its orbit around the Sun. The first Neptune Trojan to be discovered, 2001 QR322, was found in 2001. As of 2019, 22 Neptune Trojan asteroids were known—19 at L4 and 3 at L5.

The ring system
Neptune's ring system
Neptune's ring system
Evidence that Neptune has one or more rings arose in the mid-1980s when stellar occultation studies from Earth occasionally showed a brief dip in the star’s brightness just before or after the planet passed in front of it. Because dips were seen only in some studies and never symmetrically on both sides of the planet, scientists concluded that any rings present do not completely encircle Neptune but instead have the form of partial rings, or ring arcs.


Images from Voyager 2, however, revealed a system of six rings, each of which in fact fully surrounds Neptune. The putative arcs turned out to be bright regions in the outermost ring, named Adams, where the density of ring particles is particularly high. Although rings also encircle each of the other three giant planets, none displays the striking clumpiness of Adams. The arcs are found within a 45° segment of the ring. From leading to trailing, the most prominent are named Courage, Liberté, Egalité 1, Egalité 2, and Fraternité. They range in length from about 1,000 km (600 miles) to more than 10,000 km (6,000 miles). Although the moon Galatea, which orbits just planetward of the inner edge of Adams, may gravitationally interact with the ring to trap ring particles temporarily in such arclike regions, collisions between ring particles should eventually spread the constituent material relatively uniformly around the ring. Consequently, it is suspected that the event that supplied the material for Adams’s enigmatic arcs—perhaps the breakup of a small moon—occurred within the past few thousand years.


The other five known rings of Neptune—Galle, Le Verrier, Lassell, Arago, and Galatea, in order of increasing distance from the planet—lack the nonuniformity in density exhibited by Adams. Le Verrier, which is about 110 km (70 miles) in radial width, closely resembles the nonarc regions of Adams. Similar to the relationship between the moon Galatea and the ring Adams, the moon Despina orbits Neptune just planetward of the ring Le Verrier. Each moon may gravitationally repel particles near the inner edge of its respective ring, acting as a shepherd moon to keep ring material from spreading inward. (For fuller treatments of shepherding effects, see Saturn: Moons: Orbital and rotational dynamics; Uranus: The ring system.)


Galle, the innermost ring, is much broader and fainter than either Adams or Le Verrier, possibly owing to the absence of a nearby moon that could provide a strong shepherding effect. Lassell consists of a faint plateau of ring material that extends outward from Le Verrier about halfway to Adams. Arago is the name used to distinguish a narrow, relatively bright region at the outer edge of Lassell. Galatea is the name generally used to refer to a faint ring of material spread all along the orbit of the moon Galatea. Characteristics of the rings are summarized in the table.

Rings of Neptune
name distance from centre of planet (km) observed width (km) comments
Galle 41,900 2,000 indistinct edges
Le Verrier 53,200 110 flanked at inner edge by moon Despina
Lassell 55,200 4,000 bounded by rings Le Verrier and Arago
Arago 57,200 less than 100 somewhat brighter outer edge of broad Lassell ring
Galatea 61,950 less than 100 co-orbital with moon Galatea
Adams 62,930 15 possesses bright arcs; flanked at inner edge by moon Galatea

None of Neptune’s rings were detected from scattering effects on Voyager’s radio signal propagating through the rings, which indicates that they are nearly devoid of particles in the centimetre size range or larger. The fact that the rings were most visible in Voyager images when backlit by sunlight implies that they are largely populated by dust-sized particles, which scatter light forward much better than back toward the Sun and Earth. Their chemical makeup is not known, but, like the rings of Uranus, the surfaces of Neptune’s ring particles (and possibly the particles in their entirety) may be composed of radiation-darkened methane ices.

The suspected youthfulness of Adams’s ring arcs and the arguments offered can be extended to Neptune’s rings in general. The present rings are narrow, and scientists have found it difficult to explain how the orbits of the known moons can effectively confine the natural radial spreading of the rings. This has led many to speculate that Neptune’s present rings may be much younger than the planet itself, perhaps substantially less than a million years. The present ring system may be markedly different from any that existed a million years ago. It is even possible that the next spacecraft to visit Neptune’s rings will find a system greatly evolved from the one Voyager 2 imaged in 1989.:kissingf Voyager’s six discoveries, all but Proteus orbit Neptune in less time than it takes the planet to rotate. Hence, to an observer positioned near Neptune’s cloud tops, these five would appear to rise in the west and set in the east. Voyager observed two of its discoveries, Proteus and Larissa, closely enough to detect both their size and approximate shape. Both bodies are irregular in shape and appear to have heavily cratered surfaces. The sizes of the other four are estimated from a combination of distant images and their brightnesses, based on the assumption that they reflect about as much light as Proteus and Larissa—about 7 percent. Proteus, with a mean radius of about 208 km (129 miles), is a little larger than Nereid, with a mean radius of about 170 km (106 miles). The other five moons are much smaller, each having a mean radius of less than 100 km (60 miles).

Voyager did not observe Nereid at close range, but data from the probe indicate that it has a nearly spherical shape. Voyager detected no large variations in brightness as Nereid rotated. Although the spacecraft was unable to determine a rotation period, the moon’s highly elliptical orbit makes it unlikely that it is in synchronous rotation—i.e., that its rotation and orbital periods are equal. The rotation period of Triton is synchronous, and those of Neptune’s other inner moons are probably synchronous or very nearly so.


Triton is similar in size, density, and surface composition to the dwarf planet Pluto. Its highly inclined, retrograde orbit suggests that it is a captured object, which perhaps formed originally, like Pluto, as an independent icy planetesimal in the outer solar system’s Kuiper belt. Its original orbit would have been highly eccentric, but tidal interactions between Triton and Neptune—cyclic deformations in each body caused by the gravitational attraction of the other—eventually would have reshaped its path around Neptune into a circle. The process of Triton’s capture and circularization of its orbit would have severely disrupted any previously existing system of moons that had formed along with Neptune from a disk of protoplanetary material. Nereid’s radical orbit may be one consequence of this process (although the possibility that Nereid too is a captured object has not been ruled out). Moons that were in orbit between Proteus and Nereid would have been ejected from the Neptunian system, thrown into Neptune itself, or absorbed by the molten Triton. Even those moons orbiting closer to Neptune would not have escaped some disruption. The present orbits of Naiad through Proteus (see table) are probably very different from their original orbits, and these moons may be only fragments of the original bodies that formed with Neptune. Subsequent bombardment by Neptune-orbiting debris and by meteoroids from interplanetary space may have further altered their sizes, shapes, and orbits; for example, Hippocamp likely formed from an impact that almost disrupted Proteus.

Neptune also has a population of Trojan asteroids, which occupy the stable Lagrangian points 60° ahead (L4) and behind (L5) in its orbit around the Sun. The first Neptune Trojan to be discovered, 2001 QR322, was found in 2001. As of 2019, 22 Neptune Trojan asteroids were known—19 at L4 and 3 at L5.

The ring system
Neptune's ring system
Neptune's ring system
Evidence that Neptune has one or more rings arose in the mid-1980s when stellar occultation studies from Earth occasionally showed a brief dip in the star’s brightness just before or after the planet passed in front of it. Because dips were seen only in some studies and never symmetrically on both sides of the planet, scientists concluded that any rings present do not completely encircle Neptune but instead have the form of partial rings, or ring arcs.


Images from Voyager 2, however, revealed a system of six rings, each of which in fact fully surrounds Neptune. The putative arcs turned out to be bright regions in the outermost ring, named Adams, where the density of ring particles is particularly high. Although rings also encircle each of the other three giant planets, none displays the striking clumpiness of Adams. The arcs are found within a 45° segment of the ring. From leading to trailing, the most prominent are named Courage, Liberté, Egalité 1, Egalité 2, and Fraternité. They range in length from about 1,000 km (600 miles) to more than 10,000 km (6,000 miles). Although the moon Galatea, which orbits just planetward of the inner edge of Adams, may gravitationally interact with the ring to trap ring particles temporarily in such arclike regions, collisions between ring particles should eventually spread the constituent material relatively uniformly around the ring. Consequently, it is suspected that the event that supplied the material for Adams’s enigmatic arcs—perhaps the breakup of a small moon—occurred within the past few thousand years.


The other five known rings of Neptune—Galle, Le Verrier, Lassell, Arago, and Galatea, in order of increasing distance from the planet—lack the nonuniformity in density exhibited by Adams. Le Verrier, which is about 110 km (70 miles) in radial width, closely resembles the nonarc regions of Adams. Similar to the relationship between the moon Galatea and the ring Adams, the moon Despina orbits Neptune just planetward of the ring Le Verrier. Each moon may gravitationally repel particles near the inner edge of its respective ring, acting as a shepherd moon to keep ring material from spreading inward. (For fuller treatments of shepherding effects, see Saturn: Moons: Orbital and rotational dynamics; Uranus: The ring system.)


Galle, the innermost ring, is much broader and fainter than either Adams or Le Verrier, possibly owing to the absence of a nearby moon that could provide a strong shepherding effect. Lassell consists of a faint plateau of ring material that extends outward from Le Verrier about halfway to Adams. Arago is the name used to distinguish a narrow, relatively bright region at the outer edge of Lassell. Galatea is the name generally used to refer to a faint ring of material spread all along the orbit of the moon Galatea. Characteristics of the rings are summarized in the table.

Rings of Neptune
name distance from centre of planet (km) observed width (km) comments
Galle 41,900 2,000 indistinct edges
Le Verrier 53,200 110 flanked at inner edge by moon Despina
Lassell 55,200 4,000 bounded by rings Le Verrier and Arago
Arago 57,200 less than 100 somewhat brighter outer edge of broad Lassell ring
Galatea 61,950 less than 100 co-orbital with moon Galatea
Adams 62,930 15 possesses bright arcs; flanked at inner edge by moon Galatea

None of Neptune’s rings were detected from scattering effects on Voyager’s radio signal propagating through the rings, which indicates that they are nearly devoid of particles in the centimetre size range or larger. The fact that the rings were most visible in Voyager images when backlit by sunlight implies that they are largely populated by dust-sized particles, which scatter light forward much better than back toward the Sun and Earth. Their chemical makeup is not known, but, like the rings of Uranus, the surfaces of Neptune’s ring particles (and possibly the particles in their entirety) may be composed of radiation-darkened methane ices.

The suspected youthfulness of Adams’s ring arcs and the arguments offered can be extended to Neptune’s rings in general. The present rings are narrow, and scientists have found it difficult to explain how the orbits of the known moons can effectively confine the natural radial spreading of the rings. This has led many to speculate that Neptune’s present rings may be much younger than the planet itself, perhaps substantially less than a million years. The present ring system may be markedly different from any that existed a million years ago. It is even possible that the next spacecraft to visit Neptune’s rings will find a system greatly evolved from the one Voyager 2 imaged in 1989.

Of Voyager’s six discoveries, all but Proteus orbit Neptune in less time than it takes the planet to rotate. Hence, to an observer positioned near Neptune’s cloud tops, these five would appear to rise in the west and set in the east. Voyager observed two of its discoveries, Proteus and Larissa, closely enough to detect both their size and approximate shape. Both bodies are irregular in shape and appear to have heavily cratered surfaces. The sizes of the other four are estimated from a combination of distant images and their brightnesses, based on the assumption that they reflect about as much light as Proteus and Larissa—about 7 percent. Proteus, with a mean radius of about 208 km (129 miles), is a little larger than Nereid, with a mean radius of about 170 km (106 miles). The other five moons are much smaller, each having a mean radius of less than 100 km (60 miles).

Voyager did not observe Nereid at close range, but data from the probe indicate that it has a nearly spherical shape. Voyager detected no large variations in brightness as Nereid rotated. Although the spacecraft was unable to determine a rotation period, the moon’s highly elliptical orbit makes it unlikely that it is in synchronous rotation—i.e., that its rotation and orbital periods are equal. The rotation period of Triton is synchronous, and those of Neptune’s other inner moons are probably synchronous or very nearly so.


Triton is similar in size, density, and surface composition to the dwarf planet Pluto. Its highly inclined, retrograde orbit suggests that it is a captured object, which perhaps formed originally, like Pluto, as an independent icy planetesimal in the outer solar system’s Kuiper belt. Its original orbit would have been highly eccentric, but tidal interactions between Triton and Neptune—cyclic deformations in each body caused by the gravitational attraction of the other—eventually would have reshaped its path around Neptune into a circle. The process of Triton’s capture and circularization of its orbit would have severely disrupted any previously existing system of moons that had formed along with Neptune from a disk of protoplanetary material. Nereid’s radical orbit may be one consequence of this process (although the possibility that Nereid too is a captured object has not been ruled out). Moons that were in orbit between Proteus and Nereid would have been ejected from the Neptunian system, thrown into Neptune itself, or absorbed by the molten Triton. Even those moons orbiting closer to Neptune would not have escaped some disruption. The present orbits of Naiad through Proteus (see table) are probably very different from their original orbits, and these moons may be only fragments of the original bodies that formed with Neptune. Subsequent bombardment by Neptune-orbiting debris and by meteoroids from interplanetary space may have further altered their sizes, shapes, and orbits; for example, Hippocamp likely formed from an impact that almost disrupted Proteus.

Neptune also has a population of Trojan asteroids, which occupy the stable Lagrangian points 60° ahead (L4) and behind (L5) in its orbit around the Sun. The first Neptune Trojan to be discovered, 2001 QR322, was found in 2001. As of 2019, 22 Neptune Trojan asteroids were known—19 at L4 and 3 at L5.

The ring system
Neptune's ring system
Neptune's ring system
Evidence that Neptune has one or more rings arose in the mid-1980s when stellar occultation studies from Earth occasionally showed a brief dip in the star’s brightness just before or after the planet passed in front of it. Because dips were seen only in some studies and never symmetrically on both sides of the planet, scientists concluded that any rings present do not completely encircle Neptune but instead have the form of partial rings, or ring arcs.


Images from Voyager 2, however, revealed a system of six rings, each of which in fact fully surrounds Neptune. The putative arcs turned out to be bright regions in the outermost ring, named Adams, where the density of ring particles is particularly high. Although rings also encircle each of the other three giant planets, none displays the striking clumpiness of Adams. The arcs are found within a 45° segment of the ring. From leading to trailing, the most prominent are named Courage, Liberté, Egalité 1, Egalité 2, and Fraternité. They range in length from about 1,000 km (600 miles) to more than 10,000 km (6,000 miles). Although the moon Galatea, which orbits just planetward of the inner edge of Adams, may gravitationally interact with the ring to trap ring particles temporarily in such arclike regions, collisions between ring particles should eventually spread the constituent material relatively uniformly around the ring. Consequently, it is suspected that the event that supplied the material for Adams’s enigmatic arcs—perhaps the breakup of a small moon—occurred within the past few thousand years.


The other five known rings of Neptune—Galle, Le Verrier, Lassell, Arago, and Galatea, in order of increasing distance from the planet—lack the nonuniformity in density exhibited by Adams. Le Verrier, which is about 110 km (70 miles) in radial width, closely resembles the nonarc regions of Adams. Similar to the relationship between the moon Galatea and the ring Adams, the moon Despina orbits Neptune just planetward of the ring Le Verrier. Each moon may gravitationally repel particles near the inner edge of its respective ring, acting as a shepherd moon to keep ring material from spreading inward. (For fuller treatments of shepherding effects, see Saturn: Moons: Orbital and rotational dynamics; Uranus: The ring system.)


Galle, the innermost ring, is much broader and fainter than either Adams or Le Verrier, possibly owing to the absence of a nearby moon that could provide a strong shepherding effect. Lassell consists of a faint plateau of ring material that extends outward from Le Verrier about halfway to Adams. Arago is the name used to distinguish a narrow, relatively bright region at the outer edge of Lassell. Galatea is the name generally used to refer to a faint ring of material spread all along the orbit of the moon Galatea. Characteristics of the rings are summarized in the table.

Rings of Neptune
name distance from centre of planet (km) observed width (km) comments
Galle 41,900 2,000 indistinct edges
Le Verrier 53,200 110 flanked at inner edge by moon Despina
Lassell 55,200 4,000 bounded by rings Le Verrier and Arago
Arago 57,200 less than 100 somewhat brighter outer edge of broad Lassell ring
Galatea 61,950 less than 100 co-orbital with moon Galatea
Adams 62,930 15 possesses bright arcs; flanked at inner edge by moon Galatea

None of Neptune’s rings were detected from scattering effects on Voyager’s radio signal propagating through the rings, which indicates that they are nearly devoid of particles in the centimetre size range or larger. The fact that the rings were most visible in Voyager images when backlit by sunlight implies that they are largely populated by dust-sized particles, which scatter light forward much better than back toward the Sun and Earth. Their chemical makeup is not known, but, like the rings of Uranus, the surfaces of Neptune’s ring particles (and possibly the particles in their entirety) may be composed of radiation-darkened methane ices.

The suspected youthfulness of Adams’s ring arcs and the arguments offered can be extended to Neptune’s rings in general. The present rings are narrow, and scientists have found it difficult to explain how the orbits of the known moons can effectively confine the natural radial spreading of the rings. This has led many to speculate that Neptune’s present rings may be much younger than the planet itself, perhaps substantially less than a million years. The present ring system may be markedly different from any that existed a million years ago. It is even possible that the next spacecraft to visit Neptune’s rings will find a system greatly evolved from the one Voyager 2 imaged in 1989.

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