Neptune
The Blue Planet
In This Slide Show…
– The discovery of Neptune
– What a day on Neptune would be like – Neptune compared to earth – Facts about Neptune’s moons
A New Planet
Scientists in the early 1800 discovered that the planet Uranus was not following the orbit they had planned for it. They guessed that something was pulling on it even farther out in space. By 1846 astronomers had calculated it’s route and a few months later, an observer in Germany saw an unknown object in the sky. It was the new planet, Neptune. Since then, the information we have gotten about Neptune has come from observation and from Voyager 2 as it flew by.
Neptune
Composition
You could put 60 Earths into Neptune and still have some room. Neptune is mostly made of Hydrogen, Helium and Methane gas.
Interesting Facts
• Neptune actually has not even orbited the sun once since we discovered it in 1846! It takes 165 years for it to orbit the sun. • Triton is moving in the opposite direction that Neptune is moving and is steadily moving closer to Neptune. When it collides with Neptune it will create a ring system that will rival and may exceed Saturn’s. • Neptune’s Temperature is about –235 degrees F. • The Great Dark Spot at Neptune’s equator is not there anymore, but in 1997, Hubble Space Telescope saw another similar storm in Neptune’s
Statistics
Neptune has an average distance from the sun of about 4,497,000,000 kilometers. Neptune is about 49,500 kilometers across. Neptune rotates once in about 14 hours.
Neptune’s Moons
– Neptune has 8 known
moons.
– The largest moon, Triton, is
the coldest known place in the solar system, with an average temperature of –235 degrees Celsius.
– The other moons are Naiad,
Thalassa, Despina, Galatea, Larissa, Proteus and Nereid.
THE END
Special Thanks To NASA for the information and Pictures!
Copyright Information
Images for this presentation were acquired at: http://solarsystem.jpl.nasa.gov/features/plan ets/neptune/neptune.html