Top 10 Space Facts: NeptuneBy Patrick Kiger
Editor Amanda Arnold  What's the eighth planet from the Sun — the one that's big, blue, cold and buffeted by supersonic winds? If you didn't immediately come up with the answer "Neptune," don't feel too bad. The outermost of the four gas giants — a category that also includes Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus — isn't a celestial object that most of us think much about, in part because it's so far away that it can't be seen with the unaided eye. Though Neptune was discovered back in 1846 by German astronomer Johann Gottfried Galle, scientists didn't know all that much about the planet until the Voyager 2 probe did a flyby in 1989, which resulted in the first close-up photos of Neptune and a wealth of other information. Pluto's recent demotion to dwarf planet status gives Neptune added significance, in that at 2.8 billion miles (4.5 billion kilometers) from the sun, it's now the most distant of the true planets in the solar system, according to NASA. Here are 10 of the more interesting facts about the faraway behemoth. |
advertisement
Outer Space
|
-
our sites
-
video
-
shop
-
stay connected
-
corporate
