- What is the planet Neptune?
- Discovery of Neptune
- Neptune structure
- Neptune's atmosphere
- Neptune's climate
- Neptune satellites
- Neptune Rings
We explain everything about the planet Neptune, its discovery, structure, atmosphere and climate. Also, its rings and satellites.
Neptune has fainter rings than Jupiter's.What is the planet Neptune?
Neptune is the eighth planet of Solar system counting from Sun, and the largest room. It is part of the so-called outer planets, or gaseous planets. It has 5 faint rings composed of dust and rocks, 14 satellites or "moons" and its mass equals 17 times that of the Earth.
Neptune is located at a distance from the Sun of 4.03 hours at speed of light, and it is the planet furthest from the star bright. It takes 16 hours to complete your movement rotation (Neptunian day) and 165 Earth years to perform the orbit complete around the Sun (Neptunian year). In 2011 it completed its first orbit since its discovery in 1846.
In astrology, Neptune represents a "spiritual" or "inspirational" planet, and is identified with the symbol ♆, a trident in honor of the god of sea and from ocean. Hence the origin of its name from the Roman god "Neptune" (the same god that the Greeks called "Poseidon").
Discovery of Neptune
Neptune was officially discovered on September 23, 1846, and was the first planet to be located through mathematical predictions rather than observations astronomical images of the sky.
Around 1839, the French astronomer and mathematician Urbain Le Verrier (1811-1877) undertook a vast mathematical study that allowed him to establish all the variations of the orbits of the planets in the Solar System. He was able to verify that the planetary orbits behaved according to Kepler's laws and Newton's gravitational theory, but there was one exception: the planet Uranus.
This exceptional feature of Uranus led Le Verrier to pose as hypothesis the existence of an unknown planet since only a similar gravitational influence could explain the irregular behavior of Uranus.
Taking as a starting point the disturbance of the orbit of Uranus, Le Verrier was able to calculate where the unknown planet should be during a precise date on the calendar.
Le Verrier then asked the German astronomer Johann Gottfried Galle to help him confirm his prediction using the telescope of the Berlin Observatory. It was there, during the night of September 23, 1846, that Galle's assistant, Heinrich Louis d´Arrest, was finally able to observe the planet we know today as Neptune.
Neptune structure
Neptune's internal structure is similar to that of its neighboring planet, Uranus. It presents a rocky core covered by an icy mantle, which is in turn under a atmosphere thick and thick:
- Core. The nucleus of Neptune is composed of iron, nickel and silicates with a mass greater than core of planet earth. The pressure in the center of the nucleus is approximately twice that in the center of our planet.
- Mantle. Neptune's mantle is about 15 times the mass of our planet and is a vast ocean of Water, ammonia and methane. A very curious characteristic of this mantle is that at a depth of 7000 kilometers the methane decomposes into diamond crystals that rain down towards the solid core as a kind of hail. Neptune is a planet where diamonds are literally raining down.
- Atmosphere. Neptune's atmosphere is made up of hydrocarbon gases like methane, ethane, and acetylene. It is subdivided into two main regions: the lower region (troposphere), where the temperature decreases with the altitude, and the upper region (stratosphere), where the temperature increases with altitude.
Neptune's atmosphere
Neptune's atmosphere was formed from ice and molecules complex, unlike Saturn Y Jupiter, which were formed from simple molecules (such as hydrogen and helium).
The atmosphere of Neptune is similar to that of Uranus, presenting a greater amount of molecules complex such as methane gas, ethane gas, acetylene and diacetylene. These gases form veils of fog high up in the upper atmosphere, and icy methane clouds in the lower parts of the atmosphere.
In 1989, the Voyager 2 space probe discovered a "great dark spot" (similar to Jupiter's "red spot"), a massive storm surrounded by white layers of frozen methane. The most recent views of Neptune from the hubble space telescope indicate that the stain has disappeared over time.
Neptune's climate
The weather Neptune is characterized by average temperatures of -353º F (-214º C) and huge storms with winds up to eight times stronger than the most powerful hurricane ever recorded on our planet.
These supersonic winds can reach 2,000 kilometers per hour, equivalent to the maximum speed of the F / A-18 Hornet, one of the fastest fighters in the US Air Force.
Neptune is so far away that it receives a thousand times less sunlight than Earth. It is still a mystery how Neptune obtains the Energy for such intensity of climate, although it is believed to be due to the great heat internal planet (Neptune radiates 2.61 times more energy than it receives from the Sun).
Neptune satellites
So far 14 are known satellites of Neptune that have been baptized with the names of minor deities of Greco-Roman mythology. The most important is Triton, which has 99% of the mass orbiting Neptune.
Triton was discovered by the British William Lassell (1799-1880) a few days after the discovery of Neptune and it is the only satellite large enough to have a spheroid shape.
The fact that Triton has a retrograde orbit (counterclockwise) indicates that it was a planet "captured" by Neptune. This satellite is the coldest known object in the Solar System (-198º C) and on its surface are volcanoes of ice or cryovolcanoes.
Other satellites are Nereida (discovered in 1949), Larissa (discovered in 1981), Náyade, Talasa, Despina, Galatea and Proteus (discovered in 1989 thanks to the Voyager 2 space probe flyby), Halímedes, Sao, Laomedeia, Psámate and Neso (discovered between 2002 and 2003) and Hippocampus (discovered in 2013)
Neptune Rings
Neptune's rings were discovered in 1984 and are named after astronomers who made important contributions to the knowledge of the planet. These rings would have formed when one of Neptune's moons was destroyed.
These are very faint rings because they are mainly made up of dust and rock (which do not reflect good amounts of light). They are quite a bit darker than Saturn's rings (which are made up mostly of ice, and they do reflect a lot of light).
Neptune's rings are divided into two categories: on the one hand the inner rings called Galle, Le Verrier, Lassell and Arago, and on the other hand the Adams ring, which is the only outer ring. Adams is also distinguished by having five arches brighter than the rest of the ring, called Courage, Liberty, Fraternity and Equality 1 and 2.