{"id":104819,"date":"2026-05-24T11:16:22","date_gmt":"2026-05-24T05:46:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/?p=104819"},"modified":"2026-05-28T16:40:38","modified_gmt":"2026-05-28T11:10:38","slug":"nereid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/nereid\/","title":{"rendered":"Nereid"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><b>Nereid Latest News<\/b><\/h2>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">New observations from the James Webb Space Telescope suggest that Nereid may not have originated from the Kuiper Belt, as its crystalline water ice and unique spectral signature differ from known Kuiper Belt objects.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b>About Nereid<\/b><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It is the <\/span><b>third-largest moon of Neptune.\u00a0<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It was <\/span><b>discovered <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">on May 1, <\/span><b>1949, <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">by\u00a0 Dutch astronomer <\/span><b>Gerard Kuiper<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, who named the moon after the sea nymphs in Greek mythology.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Nereid is about 170 kilometers across.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It is unique because it has <\/span><b>one of the most eccentric orbits of any moon<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> in our solar system.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It is so far from Neptune that it requires <\/span><b>360 Earth days to make one orbit.\u00a0<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Like so many other moons in the outer solar system, Nereid was<\/span><b> long suspected of migrating to Neptune&#8217;s neighborhood from <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">the <\/span><b><a href=\"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/kuiper-belt\/\" target=\"_blank\">Kuiper Belt<\/a>.\u00a0<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But using the Webb telescope, scientists determined that Nereid\u2019s <\/span><b>composition was inconsistent with Kuiper Belt objects<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u2014 it had<\/span><b> too much ice.\u00a0<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That <\/span><b>suggests <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">it was<\/span><b> part of Neptune&#8217;s system all along.\u00a0<\/b><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2><b>What is the Kuiper Belt?<\/b><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It is a <\/span><b>large, doughnut-shaped cold region of icy bodies <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">located in the outer reaches of our solar system <\/span><b>beyond the orbit of Neptune.\u00a0\u00a0<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It&#8217;s sometimes called the &#8220;<\/span><b>third zone&#8221; of the solar system.\u00a0<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It is<\/span><b> similar to the main asteroid belt, <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">found between Mars and Jupiter, in that its <\/span><b>objects <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">are <\/span><b>composed of material leftover from the formation of the solar system <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">around 4.6 billion years ago.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">However, it is <\/span><b>far larger <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">than the main asteroid belt, up to <\/span><b>20 times as wide<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and 20 to 100 times its mass.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><b>Like the asteroid belt, <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">it has also been <\/span><b>shaped by a giant planet<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, although it&#8217;s more of a thick disk (like a donut) than a thin belt.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The <\/span><b>icy bodies<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> in the Kuiper Belt are called &#8220;<\/span><b>Kuiper Belt Objects&#8221;, or KBOs <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">for short. <\/span><b>Pluto <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">is the best-known KBO.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In addition to rock and water ice, objects in the Kuiper Belt <\/span><b>also contain<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> a variety of other<\/span><b> frozen compounds like ammonia and methane. \u00a0 <\/b><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Source<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">: <\/span><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/epaper.thehindu.com\/ccidist-ws\/th\/th_delhi\/issues\/186144\/OPS\/GA0G15U8O.1+G0DG17KJF.1.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">TH<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Nereid, Neptune\u2019s third-largest moon, is known for its highly eccentric orbit and possible origin in the distant Kuiper Belt. Read more about Nereid, Discovery, Latest News<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":105022,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[7700,21,22,23],"class_list":{"0":"post-104819","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-upsc-prelims-current-affairs","8":"tag-nereid","9":"tag-prelims-pointers","10":"tag-upsc-current-affairs","11":"tag-upsc-prelims-current-affairs","12":"no-featured-image-padding"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104819","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104819"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104819\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":105627,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104819\/revisions\/105627"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/105022"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}