Top 10 AMAZING Facts About NEPTUNE 

welcome to top 10archive from its 14 moons to the history of naming this blue gas giant in this installment we're going to visit the planet of neptune and learn 10 interesting facts about neptune that you probably didn't know before.

• NUMBER # 10

• the new farthest planet since pluto's demotion from a full planet to a dwarf one neptune is now classified as the most distant world in our solar system and distant it is neptune's orbit is around 2.8 billion miles or four and a half billion kilometers away from the sun to simplify this massive number just imagine being 30 times farther away from the sun as you are on earth it's no wonder that voyager 2 the only spacecraft to observe neptune up close took 12 years to reach the icy planet despite traveling at a speed of over 35 000 miles or 56 000 kilometers per hour.

• NUMBER # 09 

• roman god of the sea known to the greeks as poseidon neptune was brother of jupiter god of thunder and uncle of minerva goddess of wisdom he was both worshiped and feared by ancient sailors who relied on neptune's good will to guide them safely on long and often dangerous voyages romans dedicated a july feast to the sea god complete with games and sacrifices which actually sounds less festive now that we think about it after its discovery french mathematician ivan levarier suggested the name neptune but it wasn't until the approval of german astronomer friedrich struva that the name actually stuck.

• NUMBER # 08

• three years short bouvard was a 19th century french astronomer who while observing irregularities in uranus's orbit deduced that there was an as yet unseen world nearby in 1846 three years after brevard's death johann galli of germany became the first man to actually see the distant world at the urging of le verrier and with some help from observatory student heinrich duress gali was able to pinpoint the cause of bouvard's deviations in uranus orbit even now observatories see neptune as little more than a tiny blue speck a testament to just how far the solar system's other blue planet really.

• NUMBER # 07

• by comparison the equatorial circumference of neptune measures around 96 129 miles or 154 704 kilometers making it a whopping four times that of earth a road trip across neptune's equator would if done at a steady pace of 60 miles per hour or 96 kilometers per hour would take approximately 1600 hours or 67 days to cross and just in case you were considering hoofing it across neptune that is by comparison earth's diameter stretches just 25 000 miles or 40 000 kilometers.

• NUMBER # 06

• the windy planet it's hard enough for earthlings to deal with 150 mile or 240 kilometer per hour hurricane winds but those don't compare to the winds that neptune routinely dishes out neptune's winds are so fast that they frequently break the sound barrier hitting speeds of up to 1500 miles or 2400 kilometers per hour it's gotta make for some great kite-flying weather don't you think.

• NUMBER # 05

• blue hue scientists calculate that neptune is made up of sixty to seventy percent ice with the remainder of the planet composed of rock hydrogen methane and helium so with all that ice it's no wonder neptune gets its icy blue hue right well not quite the planet gets its distinct color from methane which absorbs red light and acts as a reflector for blue wavelengths the planet isn't always blue however it has experienced large dark spots or storms that have appeared and vanished from sight the larger of them the great dark spot discovered by the voyager 2 in 1989 could have housed the entirety of earth.

• NUMBER # 04 

• the 14 moons of neptune neptune has 14 official moons triton is the largest and best known of the moons discovered less than three weeks after neptune was first spotted it's well known for its cryovolcanic activity meaning that instead of erupting molten rock triton's volcanoes erupt water and ammonia in order of discovery neptune's moons are triton nereid larissa naed valasa despina galatia proteus halamid sayo liama dio neso samathi and s 2004 n1 while 14 moons is a lot in earth terms it isn't much when you compare it to some of our other worlds nearby uranus for example has more than double that number while saturn takes the top spot with a whopping 63 moons show off.

• NUMBER # 03

• no birthdays here neptune's day cycles are much shorter than earth's totaling about 16 hours long in fact neptune has the third shortest day of any planet in our solar system only getting beaten out by jupiter and saturn which both have around a 10 hour day the days may be short but the years are extremely long it takes neptune 165 earth years to complete its orbit around the sun a neptunian year is so long in fact that it was only in 2011 that the planet completed its first orbit since johann galle's landmark observation.

• NUMBER # 02

•  yes there are rings scientists recently confirmed that neptune like saturn and uranus has a total of six very faint rings in fact the existence of the rings were visually confirmed in 1989 though their existence was discovered in 1984 neptune's rings have only about a thousandth the total mass of uranuses despite covering a space of 77 500 miles or 125 000 kilometers the rings are so faint that a passing astronaut would be unable to see them with the naked eye instead at most he would see a few bright arcs representing neptune's outer narrow ring don't expect to see those rings for long they've been steadily deteriorating with at least one expected to vanish by this time next century.

• NUMBER # 01

• it's very cold and very hot neptune's atmosphere is colder than anything seen on our planet with surface temperatures plummeting as low as minus 218 degrees celsius or minus 350 degrees fahrenheit to put that into perspective the coldest recorded temperature on earth was just minus 89 degrees celsius or minus degrees fahrenheit in east antarctica now with that said neptune has an extremely hot core that produces temperatures hotter than the surface of our sun 7000 degrees celsius or 12 600 degrees in fahrenheit neptune's core is so hot that it generates most of the planet's heat as opposed to relying on the sun so neptune is an icy planet filled with sunscorching warmth our galaxy is a strange strange place do you know of any other interesting facts about neptune.