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Neptune
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Neptune has the worst storms in the Solar System. Winds of
2,000kph whip methane clouds around the planet. |
The eighth planet from the Sun, Neptune was the
first planet located through mathematical predictions rather than
through regular observations of the sky. (Galileo had recorded it as a
fixed star during observations with his small telescope in 1612 and
1613.) When Uranus didn't travel exactly as astronomers expected it to,
a French mathematician, Urbain Joseph Le Verrier, proposed the position
and mass of another as yet unknown planet that could cause the observed
changes to Uranus' orbit. After being ignored by French astronomers, Le
Verrier sent his predictions to Johann Gottfried Galle at the Berlin
Observatory, who found Neptune on his first night of searching in 1846.
Seventeen days later, its largest moon, Triton, was also discovered.
Nearly 4.5 billion kilometers (2.8 billion miles) from the Sun, Neptune
orbits the Sun once every 165 years. It is invisible to the naked eye
because of its extreme distance from Earth. Interestingly, due to
Pluto's unusual elliptical orbit, Neptune is actually the farthest
planet from the Sun for a 20-year period out of every 248 Earth years.
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