These two 591-second exposures of the rings of Neptune were taken with the clear filter by the Voyager 2 wide-angle camera on Aug. 26, 1989 from a distance of 280,000 kilometers (175,000 miles). And, watching from Earth in 1984, astronomers were able to see extra blinks before and after Neptune passed in front of a distant star. Still, Voyager 2 made the definitive discovery of Neptune’s rings a few days before it swept closest to the planet. After all, Uranus had rings, discovered in 1977. NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission is ready to perform an early stow on Tuesday, Oct. 27, of the large sample it collected from the surface of asteroid Bennu. These two 591-second exposures of the rings of Neptune were taken with the clear filter by the Voyager 2 wide-angle camera on Aug. 26, 1989 from a distance of 280,000 kilometers (175,000 miles). The existence of arcs is hard to understand because the laws of motion would predict that arcs spread out into a uniform ring over very short timescales. A few days before that encounter, as Neptune began looming large in Voyager’s cameras, the spacecraft discovered a faint but continuous ring system encircling the planet. This image from NASA's Dawn spacecraft shows the hummocky (wavy/undulating) terrain of Vesta's Rheasilvia quadrangle, which is the south polar region. We love your photos and welcome your news tips.

The first of Neptune's rings were discovered in 1968 by Edward Guinan. The outermost ring, Adams, contains three prominent arcs now named Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. William Lassel, the British merchant and astronomer, who first discovered Neptune’s largest moon, Triton (just 17 days after Neptune itself was discovered by a German astronomer), also suggest the possibility of rings around the planet, though his findings were largely dismissed as an illusion (which it likely was). Site Manager: Perseverance has about 146 million miles (235 million kilometers) left to reach its destination. Dr. Lori Glaze In August 2014, a new map from Voyager’s 1989 flyby of Neptune gives us a glimpse of an unseen world.

Kerwan is very relaxed and looks like a pancake especially when viewed near Ceres' limb.


The gravitational effects of Galatea, a moon just inward from the ring, are now believed to confine the arcs. On this day, August 22, in 1989, the Voyager 2 spacecraft, on its way to the outer reaches of the solar system, discovered a system of rings around Neptune. This map of the surface of Saturn's moon Enceladus, generated from images taken by NASA's Cassini and Voyager spacecraft, illustrates the imaging coverage planned for Cassini's very close flyby of ... NASA's Dawn spacecraft obtained this image of the giant asteroid Vesta with its framing camera on Aug. 26, 2011.