Neptune (June 24, 2011)

By Mike Hubbartt, © Copyright 2010, All Rights Reserved.

Neptune Facts:

• Location: 8th planet from the sun
• Size: 4th largest planet in our solar system
• Orbit: 30.06 AU
• Orbital Period: 164.79 Julian Years *
• Average Distance from Earth: 30.1 AUs *
• Diameter: 49,532 km
• Discovered: 1846 by Adams and Le Verrier
• Atmosphere: Hydrogen, helium, methane
• Moons: 13, Triton is largest (radius = 1350 km)
• Interesting facts: it has rings, internal heat source
• Total number of moons: 13 (Naiad, Thalassa, Despina, Galatea, Larissa, Proteus, Triton, Nereid, Halimede, Sao, Laomedeia, Psamathe, and Neso)
• Click here for Wolfram|Alpha data on Neptune

* = Courtesy of Wolfram Astronomy Assistant

I enjoy using astronomy software to explore the universe, and lately I’ve concentrated on some of the planets in our solar system. I’ve already covered Jupiter and Saturn, so this post covers another gas giant in our solar system. Neptune is the 8th (and last) planet in our solar system. Neptune is the 4th largest planet (in diameter) and is around 30 times further out from the sun than Earth.

Neptune was discovered in 1846. It has a predominately hydrogen and helium atmosphere, with traces of methane that help give it a blue hue. Voyager 2 flew by it and took loads of pictures back in 1989.

This is a screen shot taken with Starry Night Pro 6 today:

There is a lot of data about Neptune in Starry Night, or you can select Starry Night’s “Info” tab and select “LiveSky.com” beside the “Extended Info” field to get data on Neptune from Wikipedia.

This is a screen shot of Triton (taken with Starry Night today), the largest of the 11 moons of Neptune:

Here is a picture of Neptune as it would be seen looking west on Triton – perhaps from the window of a visiting spacecraft:

This is an excellent screen shot of Neptune taken with the Red Shift 7 astronomy software:

This is a screen shot of an image of Neptune (magnified to 400%) retrieved with Mathematica 8:

There is more data available on Neptune using AstronomicalData (introduced in Mathematica 7), which returns properties on planets, moons, stars and galaxies. Check it out at the Wolfram website.

This is an image of Neptune from NASA‘s website:

There are many sources for astronomers – amateur and professional – besides telescopes. In this age of the internet, we has so much data available that formerly was only found in libraries. Take some time away from television and video games and explore the wonders of the sky. You have the ability and resources, you just need the motivation to see that space is more than Star Wars and Aliens.

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Updates

6-24-2011 – Added Orbital Period, Average Distance from Earth Information.

2-14-2011 – Added names of all moons.