Neptune is the eighth planet from the sun in our solar system
(opens in new tab). This blue gas giant is far larger than Earth(opens in new tab), at more than 17 times Earth's mass and nearly 58 times Earth's volume, according to NASA. Neptune's rocky core is surrounded by a slushy fluid mix of water, ammonia and methane ice.
Astronomer Galileo Galilei was one of the first people to identify Neptune as a space object, however he assumed it was a star based on its slow movement. Around two hundred years later, in 1846, French astronomer Urbain Jean Joseph Le Verrier calculated the approximate location of Neptune by studying gravity-induced disturbances in the motions of Uranus according to a synopsis written by researchers at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland
At the same time Le Verrier was calculating the existence of Neptune, so was English astronomer John Couch Adams. The two scholars independently came up with nearly identical mathematical predictions about Neptune's existence. Le Verrier then informed his colleague, German astronomer Johann Gottfried Galle, about his calculations, and Galle and his assistant Heinrich d'Arrest, confirmed Le Verrier's predictions by viewing and identifying Neptune through the telescope at his observatory in Berlin.
In accordance with all the other planets seen in the sky, and as suggested by Le Verrier, this new world was given a name from Greek and Roman mythology — Neptune, the Roman god of the sea.
Neptune's Moons
Neptune has 14 known moons, named after lesser sea gods and nymphs from Greek
mythology. The largest by far is Triton whose discovery on Oct. 10, 1846, was indirectly enabled by beer — amateur astronomer William Lassell, who discovered Triton, used the funds he made as a brewer to finance his telescopes.
Average temperature: -195°C (-320°F) where atmospheric pressure equals sea level on EarthAverage distance from Sun: 2,873 million kilometers (1,785 million miles), or 19 times farther from the Sun than Earth Diameter: 51,118 kilometers (31,763 miles), Uranus is 4 times wider than Earth Volume: 68 trillion km3 (16 trillion mi3), Earth could fit inside Uranus 68 times Gravity: 8.7 m/s², or 89% that of Earth’s Solar day: 17 Earth hours Solar year: 30,687 Earth days Atmosphere: 83% hydrogen, 15% helium, 2% methane and other gases
Uranus' climate
The extreme axial tilt Uranus experiences can give rise to unusual weather. As sunlight reaches some areas for the first time in years, it heats up the atmosphere, triggering gigantic springtime storms, according to NASA.
However, when Voyager 2 first imaged Uranus in 1986 at the height of summer in its south, the spacecraft saw a bland-looking sphere with only about 10 or so visible clouds, leading to it to be dubbed "the most boring planet," wrote astronomer Heidi Hammel in "The Ice Giant Systems of Uranus and Neptune," a chapter in "Solar System Update" (Springer, 2007), a compilation of reviews in solar system science. It was decades later, when advanced telescopes such as Hubble came into play and Uranus' long seasons changed, before scientists witnessed the extreme weather on Uranus.
In 2014, astronomers got their first glimpse at summer storms raging on Uranus. Strangely, these massive storms took place seven years after the planet reached its closest approach to the sun, and it remains a mystery why the giant storms occurred after the sun’s heating on the planet was at a maximum.
Other unusual weather on Uranus includes diamond rain, which is thought to sink thousands of miles below the surface of icy giant planets such as Uranus and Neptune. Carbon and hydrogen are thought to compress under extreme heat and pressure deep in the atmospheres of these planets to form diamonds, which are then thought to sink downward, eventually settling around the cores of those worlds.
Saturn is the sixth planet from the sun and the second-largest planet in the solar system. It's the farthest planet from Earth that's visible to the naked human eye, but the planet's most outstanding features its rings are better viewed through a telescope. Although the other gas giants in the solar system Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune also have rings, Saturn's rings are particularly prominent, earning it the nickname the "Ringed Planet."
Physical Characteristics Of Saturn
Saturn is a gas giant made up mostly of hydrogen and helium. Saturn's volume is greater
than 760 Earths, and it is the second most massive planet in the solar system, about 95 times Earth's mass. The Ringed Planet is the least dense of all the planets, and is the only one less dense than water. If there were a bathtub big enough to hold it, Saturn would float.
The yellow and gold bands seen in Saturn's atmosphere are the result of superfast winds in the upper atmosphere, which can reach up to 1,100 mph (1,800 km/h) around its equator, combined with heat rising from the planet's interior. Saturn rotates about once every 10.5 hours. The planet's high-speed spin causes Saturn to bulge at its equator and flatten at its poles. The planet is around 75,000 miles (120,000 kilometers) across at its equator, and 68,000 miles (109,000 km) from pole to pole.
Saturn' Rings
Galileo Galilei was the first to see Saturn's rings in 1610, although from his telescope the rings looked more like handles or arms. Forty five years later, in 1655, Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens, who had a more powerful telescope, later proposed that Saturn had a thin, flat ring.
Saturn's Moons
Saturn has at least 62 moons. The largest, Titan, is slightly larger than Mercury, and is the second-largest moon in the solar system behind Jupiter's moon Ganymede (Earth's moon is the fifth largest).
Some of the moons have extreme features. Pan and Atlas are shaped like flying
saucers; Iapetus has one side as bright as snow and one side as dark as coal. Enceladus shows evidence of "ice volcanism": a hidden ocean spews out water and other chemicals from the 101 geysers spotted at the moon's southern pole. A number of these satellites, such as Prometheus and Pandora, are referred to as shepherd moons because they interact with ring material and keep the rings in their orbits.
Though scientists have identified many moons, Saturn has other small moons constantly being created and destroyed.
Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system and the fifth planet from the sun. The gas giant has a long, rich, history of surprising scientists.
Named after the kind of the gods in Roman mythology this "king of the planets" is a stormy enigma shrouded in colorful clouds. Its most prominent and most famous storm, the Great Red Spot, is twice the width of Earth.
Jupiter helped to revolutionize the way we saw the universe — and our place in it — in 1610 when Galileo discovered Jupiter's four large moons: Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto. These observations were the first time that celestial bodies were seen circling an object other than Earth and supported the Copernican view that Earth was not the center of the universe.
How Big Is The Jupiter
Jupiter is more than twice as massive as all the other planets combined, according to NASA. Jupiter's immense volume could hold more than 1,300 Earths. If Jupiter were the size of a basketball, Earth would be the size of a grape.
Jupiter was probably the first planet to form in the solar system, made up of gasses left over from the formation of the sun. If the planet had been about 80 times more massive during its development, it would have actually become a star in its own right, according to NASA.
How Far Is The Jupiter From The Sun
On average, Jupiter orbits at about 483,682,810 miles (778,412,020 kilometers) from the sun. That's 5.203 times farther than Earth's average distance from the sun.
At perihelion, when Jupiter is closest to the sun, the planet is 460,276,100 miles (740,742,600 km) away.
At aphelion or the farthest distance that Jupiter reaches from the sun, it is 507,089,500 miles (816,081,400 km) away.
Jupiter's Environment
Jupiter's atmosphere resembles that of the sun, made up mostly of hydrogen and helium. A helium-rich layer of fluid metallic hydrogen envelops a “fuzzy” or partially-dissolved core at the center of the planet.
The colorful light and dark bands that surround Jupiter are created by strong east-west winds in the planet's upper atmosphere traveling more than 335 mph (539 km/h). The white clouds in the light zones are made of crystals of frozen ammonia, while darker clouds made of other chemicals are found in the dark belts. At the deepest visible levels are blue clouds. Far from being static, the stripes of clouds change over time.
Inside the atmosphere, saturn.html" style="text-decoration: underline; box-sizing: border-box;">diamond rain may fill the skies, and hidden deep within the atmosphere is a dense core of unknown composition.
Jupiter's gargantuan magnetic field is the strongest of all the planets in the solar system, at nearly 20,000 times the strength of Earth's, according to the University of Colorado at Boulder. The magnetic field traps electrons and other electrically charged particles in an intense belt that regularly blasts the planet's moons and rings with radiation more than 1,000 times the level lethal to a human. The radiation is severe enough to damage even heavily shielded spacecraft, such as NASA's Galileo probe. The magnetosphere of Jupiter swells out some 600,000 to 2 million miles (1 million to 3 million km) toward the sun and tapers to a tail extending more than 600 million miles (1 billion km) behind the massive planet.
Jupiter's Moons
Jupiter has a mind-boggling 79 known moons, mostly named after the paramours and descendants of the Roman god of the same name. The four largest moons of Jupiter called Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto, were discovered by Galileo Galilei and so are sometimes called the Galilean moons
.
Ganymede is the largest moon in our solar system, and is larger than both Pluto and Mercury. It is also the only moon known to have its own magnetic field, whose eerie sound NASA's Juno mission captured in 2021. The moon has at least one ocean between layers of ice, although according to a 2014 study from the journal Planetary and Space Science, it may contain several layers of ice and water stacked on top of one another, along with atmospheric water vapor first spotted in 2021. Ganymede will be the main target of the European Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) spacecraft scheduled to launch in 2023 and arrive at Jupiter's system in 2030.
Io is the most volcanically active body in our solar system. As Io orbits Jupiter, the planet's immense gravity causes "tides" in Io's solid surface that rise 300 feet (100 meters) high and generate enough heat to spur on volcanism. Those volcanoes release more than one ton of material every second into the space around the moon, helping to create strange radio waves from Jupiter.
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