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| Solar System | Nebulae | Galaxies | Stars and Clusters | Equipment | Links Last edited - Wednesday, 25 July 2001 |
NONE AT THE MOMENT, SORRY.... |
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(Please adjust your monitor such that you can see all 17 shades)
Technical Data:-
| Diameter | 49,528 km |
| Average Distance from Sun | 4,501 million km |
| Size compared to Earth | 3.8x |
| Gravity compared to Earth | 1.2 |
| Cloud-Top Temperature | -220°C (33.2 K) |
| Length of Day | 16.11 hours |
| Length of Year | 164.8 days |
| Eccentricity of Orbit | 0.009 |
| Moons | 8 |
| Density | 1.76 gm/cm3 |
| Atmosphere | Hydrogen - 85% Helium - 13% Methane - 2% |
| Neptune is the Roman God of the Sea and certainly, from space, the colours remind you (or at least me) of the sea. In fact, underneath Neptune's atmosphere, there is thought to be an ocean of liquid methane and ice slush, surrounding a rocky core. Not much was known about Neptune before it was visited by the Voyager space probe, which found many wonderful discoveries. One of its main discoveries was its clearing up of the Neptune arc problem. It found that Neptune has in fact 3 rings which vary in thickness. The reason Netune is blue is because the Methane in it's atmosphere absorbs red light. Neptune is quite similar to Jupiter in that it has several oval hurricanes. It also has one 'Great Dark Spot' which, like Jupiter's Red Spot is a massive hurricane/storm. Unlike the Red Spot though, it seems to occasionally 'vanish'. Neptune's eight moons are: Naiad, Thalassa, Depoina, Galatea,
Larissa, Proteus, Triton and Nereid. The most interesting is Triton which has many
geyser-like eruptions, spewing invisible Nitrogen gas and dust particles many kilometres
into the atmosphere. It's an icy world of frozen methane just 2720 km wide - smaller
than Earth's moon! |
