![]() ![]() Just beyond the orbit of Neptune is the Kuiper Belt, a vast collection of comets and other forms of planetary debris. Neptune's orbit and location in the solar system have a profound impact on the solar system's outer regions. Still, most of what is known about Neptune comes from the Voyager 2 flyby. However, as telescopes have become more powerful, astronomers have observed Neptune in more detail than in the past. Neptune is one of the most mysterious worlds in the solar system, and our knowledge of it is definitely lacking. To date, the Voyager 2 flyby has been the only mission to Neptune, and it raised far more questions than it answered. Astronomers would not get their first up-close view of Neptune until 1989 when the Voyager 2 spacecraft completed the first-ever flyby of Neptune. For over a hundred years, virtually nothing was known about Neptune. Given Neptune's distance from us, it is not an easy world to study. He was able to predict the orbit of this eighth planet, and in 1846, astronomers pointed their telescopes to the sky and found Neptune, just as the math had predicted. In 1821, Alexis Bouvard predicted that the orbit of Uranus could be explained if another planet was orbiting the sun outside of Uranus's orbit. The orbit of Uranus was tilted so that the mass of Uranus and the gravitational pull of the sun could not explain. After the discovery of Uranus, astronomers were puzzled over its orbit. In 1781, the astronomer William Herschel discovered the planet Uranus. The discovery of Neptune was tied directly to the discovery of Uranus. Neptune was the latest planet to be discovered in our solar system and, interestingly, the only one to be found using mathematics rather than a telescope. ![]() Observational History An Image of Neptune Taken by Voyager 2, NASA Voyager 2 measured the fastest known winds in the solar system, reaching speeds of 1,500 miles per hour (2,400 km/h). This gigantic difference in temperature between Neptune's outer and inner layers is believed to cause Neptune's dynamic weather system. The core of Neptune is predicted to reach temperatures of (7,000 degrees Celsius), while its upper layers reach temperatures as low as minus 328 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 200 degrees Celsius). Neptune is a warmer planet despite it being further from the sun than Uranus. Voyager 2 revealed a truly remarkable and complex world. In the 174 years since astronomers found Neptune, it has only been visited by a spacecraft on a single occasion, when Voyager 2 passed by the giant planet in 1989. Still, gravitational perturbations from the other gas giants caused its orbit to migrate outwards. This has led astronomers to predict that Neptune may have formed much closer to the sun than Uranus did. Strangely, it is slightly more massive than Uranus, which is strange given that the mass of the gas giants should increase the closer you get to the sun. Orbiting the sun at a distance of 2.8 billion miles (4.5 billion kilometers), Neptune is the fourth-largest planet by diameter and third-largest by mass, having a diameter of 30,598 miles (49,244 kilometers). ![]()
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