Neptune has how many rings

Which planet in our solar system is most earth like? What is the closest planet to the sun? Why are the planets closest to the sun rocky? Why is earth closest to the sun in January?

Why is Mars closest to the Earth in August? This distance creates the longest orbit of the eight planets. But unlike a Neptunian year, a day on Neptune is relatively short. Neptune takes about Earth years to complete one orbit around the Sun. As the axial tilt of Neptune is similar to those of Mars and our planet, the ice giant has seasons just like we experience on the Earth ; each season lasts for about 40 years.

Neptune rotates faster than the Earth: one average Neptunian day lasts about 16 Earth hours. However, as the ice giant isn't a single solid object, its different parts rotate at different speeds. Neptune's equatorial zone takes about 18 hours to spin once, while the polar regions take about 12 hours to complete a rotation. As we've already mentioned above, Neptune is the farthest planet from the Sun. Sometimes the ice giant is even farther from our star than the dwarf planet Pluto!

Neptune lies at an average distance of 30 astronomical units or 4. However, sometimes the planet gets even farther than Pluto, whose highly eccentric orbit brings it inside Neptune's orbit for 20 years every Earth years. The last time this switch happened was in and lasted until As Neptune and the Earth move through space, the distance between them is constantly shifting.

When the planets are closest to each other, they lie at a distance of 4. At its farthest, Neptune lies 4. Because of its extreme distance from our planet, Neptune became the last planet of the Solar System to be discovered. The length of a trip to a planet depends on the planet's position and the spacecraft's route and speed. The only spacecraft to visit Neptune, Voyager 2, took a dozen years to reach the ice giant. Only one spacecraft, Voyager 2, has visited Neptune.

This space probe was launched in to study outer planets. Having visited Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus, it headed towards Neptune. Voyager 2 reached the blue planet in August , passing about 4, km 2, miles above its north pole.

The spacecraft studied Neptune's atmosphere, magnetosphere, rings, and moons and took amazing images of the ice giant. At the moment, there are no approved future missions to visit this distant planet.

Along with Uranus, Neptune is one of two ice giants in our Solar System. Also, it's the densest of all the gas giants. Like the rest of the Solar System's planets, Neptune formed about 4. According to scientists, the blue planet formed closer to the Sun than it is now and settled into its current position in the outer Solar System about 4 billion years ago.

At the heart of the planet, there is a solid core made of silicates, nickel, and iron, which is approximately 1. The ice giant does not have a solid surface.

The Neptunian atmosphere is made up predominantly of hydrogen and helium with a trace of methane. Like its neighbor Uranus, Neptune likely formed closer to the Sun and moved to the outer solar system about 4 billion years ago. Neptune is one of two ice giants in the outer solar system the other is Uranus.

Of the giant planets, Neptune is the densest. Scientists think there might be an ocean of super hot water under Neptune's cold clouds. It does not boil away because incredibly high pressure keeps it locked inside. Neptune does not have a solid surface. Its atmosphere made up mostly of hydrogen, helium, and methane extends to great depths, gradually merging into water and other melted ices over a heavier, solid core with about the same mass as Earth. Neptune's atmosphere is made up mostly of hydrogen and helium with just a little bit of methane.

Neptune's neighbor Uranus is a blue-green color due to such atmospheric methane, but Neptune is a more vivid, brighter blue, so there must be an unknown component that causes the more intense color.

Neptune is our solar system's windiest world. Despite its great distance and low energy input from the Sun, Neptune's winds can be three times stronger than Jupiter's and nine times stronger than Earth's.

These winds whip clouds of frozen methane across the planet at speeds of more than 1, miles per hour 2, kilometers per hour. Even Earth's most powerful winds hit only about miles per hour kilometers per hour. In a large, oval-shaped storm in Neptune's southern hemisphere dubbed the "Great Dark Spot" was large enough to contain the entire Earth. That storm has since disappeared, but new ones have appeared on different parts of the planet. The main axis of Neptune's magnetic field is tipped over by about 47 degrees compared with the planet's rotation axis.

Like Uranus, whose magnetic axis is tilted about 60 degrees from the axis of rotation, Neptune's magnetosphere undergoes wild variations during each rotation because of this misalignment. The magnetic field of Neptune is about 27 times more powerful than that of Earth.

Introduction Dark, cold, and whipped by supersonic winds, ice giant Neptune is the eighth and most distant planet in our solar system. Namesake Namesake The ice giant Neptune was the first planet located through mathematical calculations. Potential for Life Potential for Life Neptune's environment is not conducive to life as we know it. Irregularities in the orbit of Uranus led French astronomer Alexis Bouvard to suggest that the gravitational pull from another celestial body might be responsible.

German astronomer Johann Galle then relied on subsequent calculations to help spot Neptune via telescope. Previously, astronomer Galileo Galilei sketched the planet, but he mistook it for a star due to its slow motion. In accordance with all the other planets seen in the sky, this new world was given a name from Greek and Roman mythology — Neptune, the Roman god of the sea. Only one mission has flown by Neptune — Voyager 2 in — meaning that astronomers have done most studies using ground-based telescopes.

Today, there are still many mysteries about the cool, blue planet, such as why its winds are so speedy and why its magnetic field is offset. While Neptune is of interest because it is in our own solar system, astronomers are also interested in learning more about the planet to assist with exoplanet studies. Specifically, some astronomers are interested in learning about the habitability of worlds that are somewhat bigger than Earth. Those that are closer to Earth's size are called "super-Earths", while those that are closer to Neptune's size are "mini-Neptunes.

Like Earth, Neptune has a rocky core, but it has a much thicker atmosphere that prohibits the existence of life as we know it. Astronomers are still trying to figure out at what point a planet is so large that it may pick up a lot of gas in the area, making it difficult or impossible for life to exist. Neptune's cloud cover has an especially vivid blue tint that is partly due to an as-yet-unidentified compound and the result of the absorption of red light by methane in the planets mostly hydrogen-helium atmosphere.

Photos of Neptune reveal a blue planet, and it is often dubbed an ice giant, since it possesses a thick, slushy fluid mix of water, ammonia and methane ices under its atmosphere and is roughly 17 times Earth's mass and nearly 58 times its volume, according to a NASA fact sheet.