· If the sun were as tall as a typical front door, the Earth would be the size of a nickel and Neptune would be about as big as a baseball.
· Neptune orbits our sun, a star. Neptune is the eighth planet from the sun at a distance of about 4.5 billion km (2.8 billion miles) or 30.07 AU.
· One day on Neptune takes about 16 hours (the time it takes for Neptune to rotate or spin once). Neptune makes a complete orbit around the sun (a year in Neptunian time) in about 165 Earth years (60,190 Earth days).
· Like the other gas giants, Neptune does not have a solid surface. Neptune is mostly made of a very thick, very hot combination of water (H2O), ammonia (NH3), and methane (CH4) over a possible heavier, approximately Earth-sized, solid core.
· Neptune's atmosphere is made up mostly of hydrogen (H2), helium (He) and methane (CH4).
· Neptune has 13 confirmed moons (and 1 more awaiting official confirmation of discovery). Neptune's moons are named after various sea gods and nymphs in Greek mythology.
· Neptune has six rings.
· Voyager 2 is the only spacecraft to have visited Neptune.
· Neptune cannot support life as we know it.
· The discovery of the planet Neptune was one of the most exciting discoveries in astronomy.
· Neptune cannot be seen without a large telescope and was first seen in 1846 from the observatory in Berlin.
· BUT, the existence of Neptune had actually been “discovered” a year earlier, in 1845.
· Neptune is the 8th planet from the Sun. Uranus, the 7th planet, was first discovered by means of a telescope in 1781. Two astronomers (scientists who study the stars and planets), J.C.Adams in England and Urbain Le Verrier in France, had been puzzled by the shape of Uranus’ orbit.
· They worked out, using mathematics, that some large, more distant, body must be pulling Uranus towards it at certain points in the orbit.
· The Berlin observatory, following Le Verrier’s calculations giving the possible position of this object, searched for Neptune and found the planet. They named it Neptune after the Roma God of the Sea.
· Neptune orbits our sun, a star. Neptune is the eighth planet from the sun at a distance of about 4.5 billion km (2.8 billion miles) or 30.07 AU.
· One day on Neptune takes about 16 hours (the time it takes for Neptune to rotate or spin once). Neptune makes a complete orbit around the sun (a year in Neptunian time) in about 165 Earth years (60,190 Earth days).
· Like the other gas giants, Neptune does not have a solid surface. Neptune is mostly made of a very thick, very hot combination of water (H2O), ammonia (NH3), and methane (CH4) over a possible heavier, approximately Earth-sized, solid core.
· Neptune's atmosphere is made up mostly of hydrogen (H2), helium (He) and methane (CH4).
· Neptune has 13 confirmed moons (and 1 more awaiting official confirmation of discovery). Neptune's moons are named after various sea gods and nymphs in Greek mythology.
· Neptune has six rings.
· Voyager 2 is the only spacecraft to have visited Neptune.
· Neptune cannot support life as we know it.
· The discovery of the planet Neptune was one of the most exciting discoveries in astronomy.
· Neptune cannot be seen without a large telescope and was first seen in 1846 from the observatory in Berlin.
· BUT, the existence of Neptune had actually been “discovered” a year earlier, in 1845.
· Neptune is the 8th planet from the Sun. Uranus, the 7th planet, was first discovered by means of a telescope in 1781. Two astronomers (scientists who study the stars and planets), J.C.Adams in England and Urbain Le Verrier in France, had been puzzled by the shape of Uranus’ orbit.
· They worked out, using mathematics, that some large, more distant, body must be pulling Uranus towards it at certain points in the orbit.
· The Berlin observatory, following Le Verrier’s calculations giving the possible position of this object, searched for Neptune and found the planet. They named it Neptune after the Roma God of the Sea.