Written by: Forrest Goplin-Iriarte
The physical makeup of Neptune is very gaseous, it consists mainly of
hydrogen and helium, but about 2% of the planet is methane.The Voyager2 spacecraft reached Neptune in 1989 and observed a dark storm
system with a bright core of feathery clouds.
Wind speeds on Neptune reach
700 miles per hour, moving in a retrograde direction that is opposite to
the direction of its rotation. These are the strongest winds seen on any
retrograde planet in the solar system.Neptune's distance from the sun is 2,749,000,000 miles.The length of a day on Neptune is 18 hours and 24 minutes and
the length of a year on Neptune is 164.
8 Earth years.Neptune has 8 moons that revolve around the planet, but Triton is the moon
mainly talked about. Triton, Neptune's biggest moon, Triton spins
retrograde which puts down all theories of evolution because scientists
believed that the reason that the moons spun counter-clockwise was because
of the big bang, they say that the big bang caused a gravitational pull
from the planets pulling the moons in that direction, but now that Triton
spins in that direction they have no more to say. Neptune also has five
rings that surround it there are 2 bright narrow rings and three fainter
ones that are fuzzier sheets of orbiting materials. Another interesting
fact is that, in a large telescope the planet appears as a small blue disk.
The best pictures of Neptune from earth show discrete bright clouds and a
bright haze over the South Pole of the planet.The temperature on Neptune is predicted to be about -228c or -378f.The Planet was discovered during 1845 and 1846 by an Englishman John Couch
Adams and the Frenchman Urbain Jean Joseph Leverrier when unknown to each
other, they independently calculated where an eighth planet would have to
be in order to explain slight perturbations in the orbit of Uranus.Voyager 2 made a flyby of Neptune on August 25, 1989 (with its closet
approach of 4,827-km/3,000-mi) and the spacecraft provided new information
such as the existence of a total of eight satellites. It also observed a
dark storm system with a bright core of feathery clouds.
The planet is named after "Neptune" for a Roman Sea god because of its blue
color and strong winds.
