Neptune

How Many Moons Does Neptune Have?

March 12, 2012

Did you want to know how many moons Neptune has? At the current count, Neptune has 13 moons. The largest of Neptune’s moons is Triton, which was discovered by William Lassell just 17 days after Neptune itself was discovered. Triton measures 2700 km across, and it’s the 7th largest moon in the Solar System. Triton [...]

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Triton

March 12, 2012

Neptune’s largest moon, Triton, was discovered by the British astronomer William Lassell, on October 10, 1846. Triton was discovered only a little over two weeks after Neptune itself was found. Despite its early discovery, the moon did not receive its current name for many years. The name Triton was suggested in 1880; Triton is the [...]

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Neptune

March 12, 2012

Neptune is one of the four gas giants in our Solar System, as well as being one of the four outer planets. Actually, since Pluto was demoted to a dwarf planet, Neptune is the eighth and final planet in our Solar System. As a gas giant, Neptune has no solid surface, so even if a [...]

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Rings of Neptune

March 12, 2012

Neptune is one of four planets in our Solar System with planetary rings. Neptune was not discovered until 1846 and its rings were only discovered definitively in 1989 by the Voyager 2 probe. Although the rings were not discovered until the late 1900’s, William Lassell who discovered Titan recorded that he had observed a ring. [...]

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Who Discovered Neptune?

March 12, 2012

Five of the planets in the night sky are easy to see with the unaided eye, and have been known since ancient times. Uranus is just bright enough that you can see it in a perfectly dark place and know where to look. But Neptune can only be seen in a telescope. And since telescopes [...]

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How Did Neptune Get Its Name

March 12, 2012

How did Neptune get its name? Shortly after its discovery, Neptune was only referred to as “the planet exterior to Uranus” or as “Le Verrier’s planet”. The first suggestion for a name came from Johann Galle, who proposed the name Janus. Another proposal was Oceanus. Urbain Le Verrier, who discovered the planet, claimed the right [...]

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Voyager 1 Spacecraft Enters New Region of Solar System

December 6, 2011

Voyager 1 is in uncharted territory. The long-lived spacecraft has entered a new region of space that lies between where our solar system ends and where interstellar space begins. This area is not a place of sightseeing however, as a NASA press release referred to it as a kind of “cosmic purgatory.”

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“Pluto-Killer” Sets Sights on Neptune

September 18, 2011

The confessed (and remorseless) “Pluto Killer” Mike Brown has turned his gaze – and the 10-meter telescope at the Keck Observatory in Hawaii – on Neptune, our solar system’s furthest “official” planet. But no worries for Neptune – Mike isn’t after its planetary status… he’s taken some beautiful infrared images instead!

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Hubble’s New Views of Neptune

July 12, 2011

To celebrate the first complete orbit of the planet Neptue since its discovery in 1846, the Hubble Space Telescope took a series of images with the Wide Field Camera 3, showing the different faces of the planet as it rotates on its axis. The images were take on June 25-26, 2011. Even with a telescope [...]

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Happy Anniversary, Neptune!

July 11, 2011

Today, July 11, 2011 marks the first full orbit of the planet Neptune since its discovery on the night of September 23-24, 1846. But there’s a lot more to learn about this anniversary than just the date. Step inside and let’s find out…

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Neptune: Rocking The Dreidel

July 1, 2011

When it come to making your head spin, Jupiter revolves on its axis in less than 10 hours. Up until now, it was the only gas planet in our solar system that had an accurate spin measurement. But grab your top and cut it loose, because University of Arizona planetary scientist Erich Karkoschka has clocked [...]

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First-Time Solar System Mosaic From the Inside Out

February 18, 2011

Say cheese! The MESSENGER spacecraft has captured the first portrait of our Solar System from the inside looking out. The images, captured Nov. 3 and 16, 2010, were snapped with the Wide Angle Camera (WAC) and Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) of MESSENGER’s Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS).

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Neptune Acquitted on One Count of Harassment

October 5, 2010

A very popular explanation for the dynamical evolution of our solar system is being challenged by a new model that takes the blame away from Neptune for knocking a collection of planetoids known as the Cold Classical Kuiper Belt out to their current, distant home. PhD student Alex Parker from the University of Victoria in [...]

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Trojans May Yet Rain Down

October 5, 2010

It would be an interesting survey to catalog the initial reactions readers have to “Trojans”. Do you think first of wooden horses, or do asteroids spring to mind? Given the context of this website, I’d hope it’s the latter. If so, you’re thinking along the right lines. But how much do you really know about [...]

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New Horizons Mission Practices Telescopic Imager on Pluto’s Twin

September 3, 2010

This summer, the New Horizons spacecraft was awoken for its annual systems checkout, and took the opportunity to exercise the long range camera by snapping pictures of Neptune, which at the time, was 3.5 billion km (2.15 billion miles) away. The Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) snapped several photos of the gas giant, but Neptune [...]

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Clearing the Confusion on Neptune’s Orbit

August 26, 2010

Last week, Space.com had a great article about how on August 20, 2010, Neptune finally completed one orbit around the Sun since its discovery in 1846, and was now back to its original discovery position in the night sky . The original article was widely quoted, and created a lot of buzz on Twitter, Facebook [...]

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New Trojan Asteroid Discovered Around Neptune

August 12, 2010

Astronomers have found a new object in a region of Neptune’s orbit, tucked away in a very hard-to-find location, and where no previous object was known to exist. The object, 2008 LC18, is a Trojan asteroid, which refers an asteroid that shares an orbit with a larger planet or moon, but does not collide with [...]

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Comet Whacked Neptune 200 Years Ago

July 21, 2010

Researchers studying Neptune’s atmosphere found evidence that a comet may have hit the planet about two centuries ago. Was this a “cold-case” file re-opened, or did they discover a way to travel back in time to witness a long-ago event? To make the discovery, a team from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research [...]

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40 Years of Summer on Triton

April 7, 2010

If you’re planning a trip to Neptune’s moon Triton, you’ll want to head to the southern hemisphere where it’s now just past mid-summer. Yes, distant Triton actually does have seasons, astronomers at ESO’s Very Large Telescope recently determined. “We have found real evidence that the Sun still makes its presence felt on Triton, even from [...]

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New Horizons Spots Neptune’s Moon Triton

March 12, 2009

New Horizons got a great shot of Neptune’s moon Triton last fall, as it was trucking toward Pluto and the Kuiper Belt.  The mission was 2.33 billion miles (3.75 billion kilometers) from Neptune on Oct. 16, when its Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) locked onto the planet and snapped away. The craft was following a programmed sequence [...]

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