What type of planet neptune

Not that you could stand on Neptune at noon. Like Jupiter and Saturn , Neptune is a gas giant—a big ball of gas surrounding an Earth-size core of hot liquids rather than rocks or other solid matter. Clouds of frozen methane whoosh as fast as a fighter jet through storms the size of Earth. Please wear your seatbelt for the duration of your flight above Neptune.

One of these moons, Triton, has geysers that spray icy material more than five miles eight kilometers high into the frigid atmosphere. All rights reserved. Personality Quizzes. Funny Fill-In. Amazing Animals. Weird But True! Time on Neptune A day on Neptune is less than a day on Earth.

Fun Facts Neptune was given the name of the Roman god of the sea due to its bluish-ocean like color. Until the orbit of Pluto was understood, and its status dropped from that of a planet to a dwarf planet, Neptune was considered the second farthest planet from the Sun.

Neptune was observed in by Galileo Galilei but he thought that he observed a star and failed to find it again. Scientists believe that Neptune formed around 4. Light from Neptune reaches us in around 4 hours.

Though it is hot, many simply refer to it as icy. Neptune has the wildest and strangest weather in the Solar System. However, it is not understood how it gets so much energy to produce such weather.

Size and Comparison Neptune has a radius of Trivia Neptune or Uranus? The discovery of Neptune Neptune is invisible to the unaided eye and thus it evaded discovery for centuries, until in when the works of Le Verrier and Johann Galle found the bluish planet. Neptune Notes Neptune is the eighth planet from the Sun, and the fourth largest. It is an ice giant that has the strongest winds of any planet in the Solar System. The presence of methane gives Neptune its bluish color.

The coldest planet is Uranus. Neptune has 6 known planetary rings and only 14 confirmed moons. One of them, namely Triton, is believed to be a captured dwarf planet. If you stood on Neptune, the Sun would appear times fainter in the sky. Voyager 2 is the only spacecraft to have reached Neptune to this day.

This can be observed in the 40 — 42 AU region. The most heavily populated resonance in the Kuiper belt, with over known objects, is the resonance. Objects in this resonance complete 2 orbits for every 3 of Neptune, and are known as plutinos because the largest of the known Kuiper belt objects, Pluto, is among them. Although Pluto crosses Neptune's orbit regularly, the resonance ensures they can never collide.

The , , and resonances are less populated. The internal structure is very similar to that of the planet Uranus. Concentrations of methane, ammonia and water are found in the lower regions of the atmosphere with the mantle equivalent to Earth masses.

Going even deeper the conditions may be such that even methane decomposes into diamond crystals that rain downwards like hailstones. It is thought that this kind of diamond rain occurs also on Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus. The core is likely composed of iron, nickel and silicates. The core is estimated to be about 1. The pressure at the center is 7 Mbar or Gpa, twice as high as that at the center of Earth with temperatures of around 5.

The atmosphere is made up mostly of hydrogen, helium and methane. Very similar to Uranus, its vivid blue color is influenced by the presence of methane and some unknown factor causes the more intense color. Neptune may not be as cold as Uranus but it has the most powerful winds out of all the planets in the Solar System despite being the furthest planet from the Sun and receiving the lowest energy input from it.

Having the wildest and strangest weather in the entire Solar System, it is not understood how it gets this much energy in order to produce such weather. Neptune has an average temperature of degrees Celsius; degrees. Wind speeds blowing westward on the equator reach up to 2, kilometers or 1. Most winds travel retrograde to the rotation of the planet they are 5 times stronger than the strongest winds recorded on Earth, breaking the sound barrier.

Bands and colossal storms also form on the planet. In when Voyager 2 observed the planet, a Great Dark Spot was present among other spots. Further observations led to discovery of other storms, each appearing and disappearing. The more active weather on Neptune might be due, in part, to its higher internal heat compared to that of Uranus.

It is believed that this is caused by the magnetic field not being generated in the core but rather by an electrically conducting liquid mantle, or that the mantle deflects the magnetic field from the core which gives it a weird offset in relation to the rotational axis. No planet in the solar system has a perfectly aligned magnetic field. However, only Uranus and Neptune have such a tilted magnetosphere.

Auroras exist on Neptune but they are very faint due to particles not getting charged so much by the sun, and because of the direction of the magnetosphere, they are mainly type B aurora, or SAR arcs. SAR arcs are not around the poles, but rather around the mid latitudes of the planet. A common feature of the gas giants are their ring systems, which Neptune also has. It is very faint due to its low denseness and extremely dark color, a reddish hue. Neptune has 5 ring systems named after the people involved in the discovery and research of Neptune.

The innermost is the Galle Ring, which is faint and wide at 2. The second is the first bright ring, named Le Verrier, it is only km wide or The third is the Lassell Ring, a very faint band 4. On the edge of this ring is the Arago Ring, slightly brighter and less than km or 62 mi wide.

Neptune's magnetic poles are tipped over by roughly 47 degrees compared with the poles along which it spins. As such, the planet's magnetic field, which is about 27 times more powerful than Earth's, undergoes wild swings during each rotation. By studying the cloud formations on the gas giant, scientists were able to calculate that a day on Neptune lasts just under 16 hours. Neptune's elliptical, oval-shaped orbit keeps the planet an average distance from the sun of almost 2.

Neptune goes around the sun once roughly every Earth years, and completed its first orbit, since being discovered , in Every years, Pluto moves inside Neptune's orbit for 20 years or so, during which time it is closer to the sun than Neptune.

Nevertheless, Neptune remains the farthest planet from the sun, since Pluto was reclassified as a dwarf planet in Atmospheric composition by volume : hydrogen, 80 percent; helium, Composition : The overall composition of Neptune is, by mass, thought to be about 25 percent rock, 60 to 70 percent ice, and 5 to 15 percent hydrogen and helium, according to Tristan Guillot, author of "Interiors of Giant Planets Inside and Outside the Solar System" in the journal Science.

Internal structure : Mantle of water, ammonia and methane ices; Core of iron and magnesium-silicate. Average distance from the sun : 2,,, miles 4,,, km. By comparison: Perihelion closest approach to the sun : 2,,, miles 4,,, km.