A TNO or Trans Neptunian object is any minor planet orbiting the sun in our solar system beyond Neptune, or at a distance which is more than Neptune’s (on average). Known divisions of bodies beyond Neptune which are still part of the solar system are the Kuiper belt, the scattered disk and the Oort cloud. The Kuiper Belt is similar to the asteroid belt and larger by far – it is said to be 20 to 200 times bigger. It [...]

Are there planets that are not composed of rock, like Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars? Are there planets where there is no land, just all nothingness? Yes, there are, they are known as a Gas Giants, they are large celestial bodies that are instead made up of gases. They may have a solid core, and their storm-laden atmosphere is very thick. They are all so large they could fit ten Earths.

The planet Neptune has features that other planets don’t have. It is far from Earth in which it can be compared to a tiny star when being observed through the use of binoculars. It is said to be brilliantly blue. When we are viewing planets in the sky at night, we actually see the light that is reflected off of these planets from the sun. Due to this, it can be ascertained that reflected sunlight is also seen from Neptune. [...]

When Pluto passes into Neptune’s orbit during its revolution around the Sun, Neptune the 8th planet from the Sun becomes the outermost planet in the Solar System for a long period. Although categorized as one of the giant gas planets along with Uranus and Jupiter, Neptune’s rocky core is only a bit larger than of Earths, but its overall mass is 17 times more. Because of the gases on Neptune which give off a light blue color, Neptune is named [...]

The fourth biggest planet in the Solar System, Neptune is named after the god of the sea, Neptune, from Roman mythology. Neptune is one of the three planets that were not visible to the human eye; the other two planets are Uranus and Pluto (now classified as a dwarf planet). Unlike the other five planets, Neptune, along with Pluto and Uranus, were not discovered during the pre-historic period. Basically, this means the discovery of the planet was due to scientific [...]

Some astronomers were actually able to view Neptune long ago but they did not realize what they were viewing was a planet. One of these astronomers was Galileo who was able to observe Neptune but was thinking it was only a star. Through the use of telescopes, planets may look like disks while stars look similar to the points of light. The telescope used by Galileo at that time was not that powerful enough to make the actual revelation of [...]

There are 13 moons discovered to orbit around the 8th planet of the solar system, Neptune. The first, and the largest, moon, Triton, to be discovered was found just 17 days after the planet itself was discovered. After Triton’s discovery, it took another century for astronomers to find the second moon of Neptune.

Unlike the rings of its neighbor Saturn, Neptune’s rings are faint and less dense. Even the densest of the five rings of Neptune pale in comparison to the less dense rings of Saturn. It is comparable to Jupiter’s rings that are mostly made of dust particles. These five Neptune rings were discovered by the Voyager 2 in 1989 and has been studied by astronomers ever since.

There are two main layers that compose Neptune’s atmosphere: the troposphere and the stratosphere. In the troposphere the temperature decreases as the altitude increases. The opposite is true for the stratosphere. The temperature increases as the altitude increases. The area which separates the two is known as the tropopause.

The average distance between the Sun and Neptune is 4.55 billion km, and Neptune completes its orbit every 164.79 years; a year on Neptune is 164.79 Earth years. Despite this fact, it never appears in the same position in our sky because the Earth would have rotated in a different location during its 365.25 day orbit. Neptune’s elliptical orbit is inclined at 1.77 degrees when compared to our own planet. Because of its 0.011 eccentricity, the distance between Neptune and [...]