Download Neptune - Midland ISD

By Robert, Alexis, and Arleth
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Neptune was discovered September 23rd, 1846.
The time is takes for Neptune to circle around
the sun once (orbital period) is 165 years.
The length of their average day is 16 hours and
6 minutes.
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Neptune is the eighth and farthest planet from
the Sun in the Solar System. It is the fourthlargest planet by diameter and the third-largest
by mass. Among the gaseous planets in the
Solar System, Neptune is the most dense.
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The planet Neptune was mathematically
predicted before it was directly observed.
After it was discovered, it turned out it had
been observed many times before but not
recognized. There were others who made
various calculations about its location, which
did not lead to its observation.
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Neptune is invisible to the naked eye as it is too
dim.
There is evidence that Neptune was seen and
recorded by Galileo Galilei in 1613, Jérôme
Lalande in 1795 and John Herschel in 1830, but
none is known to have recognized it as a planet
at the time.
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Neptune's largest moon, Triton, was
discovered at the same time as the planet.
Another satellite, Nereid, wasn't found until
1949. The other six were spotted by Voyager II
during its flyby in 1989. A lot of research has
been done on Triton, and there is evidence that
life may have existed there at one time.
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Neptune’s atmosphere is made up mostly of
hydrogen, helium, and methane.
The upper atmosphere of Neptune contains
some white clouds of frozen methane.
Neptune has an average cloud-top temperature
of about -225 C.
At a speed of 1,000 km/h, Neptune has the
strongest winds in the Solar System.
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William Lassell spotted Triton on 10 October
1846 -- just 17 days after a Berlin observatory
discovered Neptune. It is the largest moon
Neptune has and the farthest. Dutch-American
astronomer Gerard Kuiper (for whom the
Kuiper Belt was named) found Neptune's
third-largest moon, Nereid, in 1949. He missed
Proteus, the second-largest, because it's too
dark and too close to Neptune for telescopes of
that era.
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Proteus and five other moons had to wait for
Voyager 2 to make themselves known. All six
are among the darker objects found in the solar
system. Astronomers using improved groundbased telescopes found more satellites in 2002
and 2003, bringing the known total to 13.
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Voyager 2 revealed fascinating details about
Triton. Part of its surface resembles the rind of
a cantaloupe. Ice volcanoes spout what is
probably a mixture of liquid nitrogen, methane
and dust, which instantly freezes and then
snows back down to the surface. Triton's icy
surface reflects so much of what little sunlight
reaches it that the moon is one of the coldest
objects in the solar system, about -400 degrees
Fahrenheit (-240 degrees Celsius).
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The rings of Neptune consist primarily of five
principal rings and were first discovered (as
"arcs") in 1984.
At their densest, they are comparable to the
less dense portions of Saturn's rings but much
of Neptune's ring system is quite tenuous, faint
and dusty, more closely resembling the rings of
Jupiter.
The mantle is equal to 10 to 15 Earth masses
and is rich in water, ammonia and methane.
The core of Neptune is composed of iron,
nickel and silicates, with an interior model
giving a mass about 1.2 times that of Earth.
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In 1989, the Great Dark Spot, an anti-cyclonic
storm system was discovered by NASA's
Voyager 2 spacecraft. The storm resembled the
Great Red Spot of Jupiter. Some five years later,
on 2 November 1994, the Hubble Space
Telescope did not see the Great Dark Spot on
the planet. Instead, a new storm similar to the
Great Dark Spot was found in the planet's
northern hemisphere.
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Because Neptune is not a solid body, its
atmosphere undergoes differential rotation.
The wide equatorial zone rotates with a period
of about 18 hours, which is slower than the
16.1-hour rotation of the planet's magnetic
field. By contrast, the reverse is true for the
polar regions where the rotation period is 12
hours.
http://www.cleanvideosearch.com/media/action
/yt/watch?videoId=EmUvTH7sveg
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As you can see, Earth is no comparison to
Neptune’s mass and size.