NASA — How Well Do you Know Neptune?

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How Well Do you Know Neptune?

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Dark, cold and whipped by supersonic winds, Neptune is the last of the hydrogen and helium gas giants in our solar system. More than 30 times as far from the sun as Earth, the planet takes almost 165 Earth years to orbit our sun! In fact, in 2011, Neptune completed its first orbit since its discovery in 1846.

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Here are a few things you might not know about the windiest planet:

  • If the sun were as tall as a typical front door, the Earth would be the size of a nickel and Neptune would be about as big as a baseball.
  • Neptune orbits our sun, a star. Neptune is the eighth planet from the sun at a distance of about 4.5 billion km (2.8 billion miles) or 30.07 AU. 
  • One day on Neptune takes about 16 hours (the time it takes for Neptune to rotate or spin once)
  • Neptune makes a complete orbit around the sun (a year in Neptunian time) in about 165 Earth years (60,190 Earth days)
  • Neptune has six rings
  • Voyager 2 is the only spacecraft to have visited Neptune
  • Neptune has 13 moons. They are named after various sea gods and nymphs in Greek mythology

Did you know that Neptune has storms?

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Similar to Jupiter, Neptune has storms that create gigantic spots in its atmosphere…well, it did. When Voyager 2 flew past Neptune in 1989, it tracked and imaged the “Great Dark Spot” — a storm larger than the entire Earth! When the Hubble Space Telescope imaged Neptune the spot had disappeared, only to be replaced with two smaller storms, which in turn also disappeared.

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