Neptune

Steven Dutch, Natural and Applied Sciences, University of Wisconsin - Green Bay
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Vital Statistics

• Orbits Sun in 164 years.
• Averages 2795 million miles from the Sun.
• Distance from Sun varies by 67 million miles (1% of orbit diameter).
• Most circular orbit apart from Venus.
• Nearly a twin to Uranus.
• 27,600 miles in diameter, 17.2 times as massive as Earth.
• Densest of the four large outer planets (2.2).
• Rotates in about 18 hours.
• Unlike Uranus, Neptune has a dynamic atmosphere. Voyager in 1989 revealed cloud belts, multiple cloud levels and a great dark storm system which, by analogy with Jupiter, was called the Great Dark Spot. A few years later, the Hubble Space Telescope showed that the Great Dark Spot had disappeared.

The Rings of Neptune

The rings of Neptune are named for people influential in the discovery of the planet. They are:

• Galle, radius 41,900 km, width 1700 km. Thin and diffuse
• Leverrier, radius 53200 km, width 100 km. Thick and narrow
• 1989N4R, radius 53200 km, width 4000 km. Thin and diffuse
• Adams, radius 62900 km, width 15 km. Thick and narrow.
• The Adams ring is uneven and consists of clumpy arcs of ring material connected by a thinner ring.

The Moons of Neptune

Triton

• 2700 kilometers in diameter
• 220,000 miles (355,000 km) from Neptune.
• Only large satellite in a retrograde orbit.
• Retrograde orbit means Triton will eventually spiral into Neptune (in a few hundred million to a few billion years)
• Orbit tilted 20 degrees to Neptune's equator.
• Orbit suggests Triton was captured,
• At -400 F, coldest object yet observed closely in Solar System.
• Polar cap of nitrogen frost
• Thin nitrogen atmosphere
• Geysers, probably result of solar heating of frozen subsurface nitrogen.
• Large fissure network
• Large areas of icy surface were melted, then refrozen.

Nereid

• Small, 200 miles or so (350 km)
• Orbits Neptune in a strange orbit that carries it from 870,000 to 6,000,000 miles from Neptune with a period of about a year. This is the second most eccentric orbit of any planet, asteroid or moon in the Solar System. Only one asteroid has a more eccentric orbit.

Proteus

• Discovered by Voyager
• 400 km diameter (250 miles); bigger than Nereid.
• 118,000 km (70,000 mi) from Neptune.

Other small Moons of Neptune

• Naiad, 60 km (40 mi) diameter, distance 48,000 km (30,000 mi)
• Thalassa 80 km (50 mi.) diameter, distance 50,000 km
• Despina 150 km (90 mi.) diameter, distance 52,500 km
• Galatea 160 km (100 mi.) diameter, distance 62,000 km
• Larissa 200 km (120 mi.) diameter, distance 73,500 km

All discovered by Voyager. All, including Proteus, are inside the Roche limit of Neptune, the zone where tidal forces prevent satellite formation. Hence they must have been captured or had their orbits modified somehow.

References

• Robert H. Brown and Dale P. Cruickshank, 1985, The Moons of Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. Scientific American, vol. 253, no. 1, pp. 38-47
• Kinoshita, June, Neptune; Scientific American, v261 p82-91 November 1989
• Voyager 2 Neptune Encounter, Special issue of Science, vol. 246, No. 4936, December 15, 1989.
• Voyager 2 Findings on Triton, Special issue of Science, vol. 250, December 15, 1989.

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Created 20 May 1997, Last Update 2 April 1998

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