Discoverers of Neptune

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Urbain Le Verrier
Mathematician Urbain Jean Joseph Le Verrier was a French mathematician who specialized in celestial mechanics and is best known for his part in the discovery of Neptune

John Couch Adams

His most famous achievement was predicting the existence and position of Neptune, using only mathematics. The calculations were made to explain discrepancies with Uranus's orbit and the laws of Kepler and Newton. At the same time, but unknown to each other, the same calculations were made by Urbain Le Verrier. Le Verrier would assist Berlin Observatory astronomer Johann Gottfried Galle in locating the planet on 23 September 1846, which was found within 1 of its predicted location, a point in Aquarius. (There was, and to some extent still is, some controversy over the apportionment of credit for the discovery; see Discovery of Neptune.) .A crater on the Moon is jointly named after him, Walter Sydney Adams and Charles Hitchcock Adams. Neptune's outermost known ring and the asteroid 1996 Adams are also named after him. The Adams Prize, presented by the University of Cambridge, commemorates his prediction of the position of Neptune. His personal library is now in the care of Cambridge University Library.

Johann Gottfried Galle (9 June 1812 10 July 1910) was a German astronomer from Radis, Germany, at the Berlin Observatory who, on 23 September 1846, with the assistance of student Heinrich Louis d'Arrest, was the first person to view the planet Neptune and know what he was looking at. He used the calculations of Urbain Le Verrier to know where to look Johann Gottfried Galle

Johann Gottfried Galle

Neptune Facts After Pluto was declassified as a planet, Neptune became the farthest planet from the sun. Neptune's diameter is about 30,200 miles or almost 4 times the Earth's diameter. The planet was named after the Roman sea God. Neptune Facts You Might Not Know About Neptune is so far away that it took the space probe Voyager 2, 12 years to reach it. Neptune is the stormiest planet. The winds there can blow up to 1,240 miles per hour, that is three times as fast as Earth's Hurricanes. The planet has has a system of thin dark rings but they are incomplete rings and are best described as arcs. Neptune is a sea blue color due to the methane gas in its atmosphere. Neptune once had a great dark spot similar to Jupiter. Neptune only receives 1/900 of the solar energy that reaches Earth. Neptune has its own heat source, it emits a quantity of energy 2.7 times greater than it receives. Neptune has 19 known moons.

Neptune is 30 times farther from the sun as is the Earth. It goes around the sun once every 165 Earth Years. The atmosphere is made up of Hydrogen, Helium and Methane. Neptune has a rocky core. Interesting Facts About Neptune

Neptune has a shorter day than the Earth. One day measures about sixteen Earth hours. Since it is the eighth planet from the sun, it has the second longest year. It takes one hundred sixty-five Earth years for Neptune to make one complete orbit around the Sun.

Scientists believe Neptune has a hot, rocky core about the size of Earth. It is covered with an ocean of water and other chemicals. The atmosphere is mainly hydrogen and helium. The high heat inside Neptune causes convection currents. Neptune probably gets as much heat from its central core as it does from the Sun. However, the average surface temperature is only -355 degrees fahrenheit. That is very cold. Several dark spots have been seen on Neptune. The largest is about the size of Earth. It is called The Great Dark Spot. It may be a gigantic storm like the Great Red Spot on Jupiter. The Great Dark Spot was first seen by the Voyager 2 space probe in 1989. In the 1990s, the Hubble Space Telescope could not find it. Astronomers are not sure why it disappeared or whether it will reappear. Long wispy clouds race around Neptune. They are blown by the fastest winds in the solar system. Near the Great Dark Spot winds blow up to 1,200 mph! One cloud zooms around the planet once every 16 hours. Scientists have nicknamed it Scooter because it moves so quickly. Even though Neptune diameter is 30,200 miles, it is the smallest of the four gas planets. Neptune actually looks like a star through binoculars. Neptune has 8 moons. The biggest ones are Triton and Nereid. Triton is even bigger than the planet Pluto! Unlike most moons, Triton orbits in the opposite direction of Neptune's spin. We now know that Neptune may have faint rings. Neptune's rings were found in 198