Despina, a moon of Neptune
32,638 miles
97 miles
Despina is a small moon of Neptune. It is one of Neptune's inner moons and is the third closest moon to orbit the planet. Despina has a diameter of approximately 156 kilometres (97 miles). It orbits Neptune at a distance of just over 52,500 kilometres (32,600 miles). A length of an orbit takes only eight hours which means that it orbits Neptune faster than the planet spins.
Despina was discovered in 1989 through images taken by the Voyager 2 spacecraft. Voyager 2 flew past Neptune in 1989 and also discovered most of the planet's other inner moons.
Despina orbits very closely to one of Neptune's rings, its Le Verrier ring. It is considered to be a shepherd moon, a moon which holds the materials in the ring in place.
Despina is believed to be the fragments of an earlier moon that was destroyed when Neptune captured its largest moon Triton. Parts of that destroyed moon joined back together to form Despina and some of Neptune's other inner moons.
It is thought that Despina itself will be destroyed at some point in its very distant future. Its orbit is likely to decay which will bring it closer and closer to Neptune until it either falls into Neptune's atmosphere or gets torn apart by gravitational forces. It will possibly form a ring.
Despina is classed as a regular prograde moon. Regular moons are moons that formed out of materials spinning around a planet. Irregular moons are ones that were captured by a planet. A prograde moon is one which orbits in the same direction of the rotation of its host planet.
Despina was named by the International Astronomical Union and received its name on 16th September 1991. It gets its name from Despoina, a water nymph in Greek mythology. Despoina is the daughter of Poseidon (the Greek equivalent of Neptune) and Demeter.
As Neptune is the Roman god of the sea, all of its moons have water-related names.
Before it received its official name, Despina was identified as S/1989 N 3. It may also be referred to as Neptune V.
