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Science Planets
Updated September 14, 2022, 8:34 PM
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Editor and journalist specializing in science and nature
The name of the planet Neptune, god of the oceans for the Romans, in a process similar to that which took place with Uranus was adopted by consensus within the community of astronomers. Neptune, moreover, was the first of the planets of the solar system discovered through mathematical calculations, since the ancients, as with Uranus, thought it was a star.
Dark, cold, and ruled by supersonic winds, the ice giant Neptune is the eighth and most distant planet in our solar system. Neptune is so far away, in fact, that it is the only planet in the solar system that is not visible from Earth with the naked eye.
Neptune has 14 known moonss named after sea gods and nymphs in Greek mythology and also a ring system that has five main rings and four ring arcs, which are clumps of dust and debris that did not complete the circumference probably formed by the gravity of a nearby moon called Galatea.
With a radius of 24,622 kilometers, Neptune is the fourth largest planet in the solar system.To give you an idea of its size, four Earths would fit in a row along its equator. In terms of mass, it's third largest, surpassed only by Jupiter and Saturn.
Neptune shares many similarities with its neighbor Uranus. Neptune lacks a solid surface and is classified as an ice giant. Most of its mass is a fluid "ice" of water, ammonia, and methane that sits on a small rocky core. Scientists also believe that There could be an ocean of warm water beneath Neptune's cold clouds., which would not evaporate due to the high pressure exerted by the atmosphere.
Neptune also has a magnetic field tilted about 47 degrees relative to the planet's rotational axis and up to 27 times stronger than Earth's.
As in Uranus, the atmosphere of Neptune is composed primarily of molecular hydrogen, atomic helium, and methane., although some small differences in its composition, such as a greater quantity of the latter gas, makes it the two planets appear in different blue colors.
Neptune is also the windiest world in our solar system Despite its great distance from the Sun and the low energy input reaching the planet from our star, Neptune's winds can in fact be three times stronger than Jupiter's and nine times stronger than Earth's, reaching speeds of up to 2,000 kilometers per hour.
Saturn has only been visited once by a human-made probe, Voyager 2. Until then, the limited data obtained about the planet Neptune came from observations through telescopes. In fact, the arrival of Voyager 2 revolutionized what we knew about this ice giant. For example, the probe revealed a large dark spot, Now lost in the planet's atmosphere, it resembles Jupiter's Great Red Spot. This great spot corresponded to a gigantic hurricane with winds of over 2,000 kilometers per hour, the most violent ever detected in our solar system.
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