After the discovery of Uranus, the astronomers noticed something funny about its orbit, and figured a more distant planet was distorting Uranus’s Orbit. Then they found Neptune on September 23^rd, 1846 by two men named Galle and d’Arrest. Neptune is the 8^th and last planet from the Sun. Neptune is 4,504,000,000km or 30 astronomical units from the Sun and the diameter is 49,532km around the equator. An astronomical unit is the distance the Earth is away from the Sun. Neptune is named after a roman god. The Greek version is Poseidon. Neptune was the god of the sea.

Neptune has only been visited by one satellite, Voyager 2. Most of what scientists know about Neptune is from this one encounter, although, ground telescopes have helped out a lot too. Neptune’s atmosphere is made up of 15% hydrogen, 60% helium, and the rest is methane. Neptune is very likely to have a rocky core about the size of Earth but it is STILL impossible to be sure.

Like Uranus, Neptune’s blue color is the result of red light being absorbed by methane in the upper atmosphere. If you have ever looked at a picture of Neptune, you have probably noticed a dark blue spot on the lower part of the planet. Believe it or not, but this is a storm, quite like Jupiter’s Great Red Spot but half the size. You guessed it; it’s called the Great Dark Spot. In 1994, The Great Dark Spot disappeared, either covered by the atmosphere or just dissipation, it reappeared shortly afterward in the northern atmosphere, showing Neptune’s atmospheric conditions change very rapidly. Neptune’s winds can reach up to 2000kph, which makes them the fastest in the solar system.

Neptune also has rings, although they are dark like most other planets, the composition is still unknown. Neptune has 25 named and unnamed moons. Neptune can be seen with binoculars just barely and a fairly powerful telescope is needed to see anything but a tiny circle.