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The last one in the family, Neptune ( ♆ , वरुण ) is a world far far away. This cold planet with Supersonic winds is a mysterious place in the dark.
Here are some interesting facts about Supersonic Neptune:
The discovery of Neptune was initially credited to both British astronomer John Couch Adams and French astronomer Urbain Le Verrier. Later, it was concluded that Adams does not deserve equal credit with Le Verrier for the discovery of Neptune. The credit belongs only to the person who succeeded both in predicting the planet’s place and in convincing astronomers to search for it. Neptune was discovered about 12° from Adams’ prediction
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Shortly after its discovery, Neptune was referred to simply as “the planet exterior to Uranus” or as “Le Verrier’s planet”. Claiming the right to name his discovery, Le Verrier quickly proposed the name Neptune for this new planet
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The difference between its minimum and maximum distance from the Sun is 0.52 AU
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A telescope or strong binoculars will resolve Neptune as a small blue disc, similar in appearance to Uranus
Appendix: apparent magnitude
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Considering equatorial radius, Uranus‘ radius is 4.007 Earths wide while Neptune’s radius is 3.883 Earths wide
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The heat leftover from Neptune’s formation may be sufficient to explain its current heat flow. Though it is more difficult to simultaneously explain Uranus‘s lack of internal heat while preserving the apparent similarity between the two planets
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In the Solar System, it is the fourth-largest planet by diameter
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The long orbital period of Neptune means that the seasons last for forty Earth years
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Uranus and Neptune are normally considered “ice giants” to emphasise this distinction
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Most of the winds on Neptune move in a direction opposite to the planet’s rotation
Appendix: Supersonic
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Some five years later, on 2 November 1994, the Hubble Space Telescope did not see the Great Dark Spot on the planet. Instead, a new storm similar to the Great Dark Spot was found in Neptune’s northern hemisphere
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Over the age of the Solar System, certain regions of the Kuiper belt became destabilised by Neptune’s gravity, creating gaps in the Kuiper belt’s structure. The region between 40 and 42 AU is an example
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Of these, the irregularly shaped Proteus is notable for being as large as a body of its density can be without being pulled into a spherical shape by its own gravity
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The existence of arcs was difficult to explain because the laws of motion would predict that arcs would spread out into a uniform ring over short timescales. Astronomers now estimate that the arcs are corralled into their current form by the gravitational effects of Galatea, a moon just inward from the ring
Appendix: Ring Arcs
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Because this was the last major planet the spacecraft could visit, it was decided to make a close Flyby of the moon Triton. This was done regardless of the consequences to the trajectory, similarly to what was done for Voyager 1’s encounter with Saturn and its moon Titan
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Source: Wikipedia
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