Rings of Neptune 1846 when William Lassell, the discoverer of Neptune's largest moon, Triton, thought he had seen a ring around the planet. However, his claim was never confirmed and it is likely that it was an observational artifact. The first reliable detection of a ring was made in 1968 by stellar occultation, although that result would go unnoticed until 1977 when the rings of Uranus were discovered. Soon after the Uranus discovery, a team from Villanova University led by Harold J. Reitsema began searching for rings around Neptune. On 24 May 1981, they detected a dip in a star's brightness during one
Stability of the Solar System becoming significantly more—or less—elliptical. In calculation, the unknowns include asteroids, the solar quadrupole moment, mass loss from the Sun through radiation and solar wind, drag of solar wind on planetary magnetospheres, galactic tidal forces, and effects from passing stars. Furthermore, the equations of motion describe a process that is inherently serial, so there is little to be gained from using massively parallel computers. The Neptune–Pluto system lies in a 3:2 orbital resonance. C.J. Cohen and E.C. Hubbard at the Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren Division discovered this in 1965. Although the resonance itself will remain stable in the short term,