Neptune

/nep"toohn, -tyoohn/, n.

1. the ancient Roman god of the sea, identified with the Greek god Poseidon.

2. the sea or ocean: Neptune's mighty roar.

3. Astron. the planet eighth in order from the sun, having an equatorial diameter of 30,200 mi. (48,600 km), a mean distance from the sun of 2794.4 million mi. (4497.1 million km), a period of revolution of 164.81 years, and two moons. See table under planet (def. 1).

4. a township in E New Jersey. 28,366.

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I

Eighth planet from the Sun, discovered in 1846 and named after the Roman god of the sea.

It has an average distance from the Sun of 2.8 billion mi (4.5 billion km), taking 165 years to complete one orbit and rotating every 16.11 hours. Neptune has more than 17 times Earth's mass, 58 times its volume, and 12% stronger gravity at the top of its atmosphere. It has an equatorial diameter of 30,775 mi (49,528 km). Neptune consists largely of hydrogen and helium. It has no apparent solid surface but may have a frozen, rocky core. Its atmosphere contains substantial amounts of methane gas, whose absorption of red light causes Neptune's deep blue colour. The Voyager 2 space probe in 1989 discovered winds of over 1,570 mi/hour (700 m/second), the fastest known for any of the Sun's planets, and dark spots that may be storms similar to Jupiter's Great Red Spot. Neptune receives little solar radiation, but temperature measurements of about -353 °F (-214 °C) suggest an internal heat source. Neptune's weak magnetic field traps solar wind and cosmic rays in a belt around the planet. Neptune has a system of rings, made largely of dust-sized particles, and eight known satellites; the largest is Triton, almost as big as Earth's Moon.

II

In Roman religion, the god of water.

Neptune was originally the god of fresh water, but by 399 BC he was identified with the Greek god Poseidon and thus became a deity of the sea. His female counterpart, Salacia, probably began as a goddess of spring water but was later equated with the Greek goddess Amphitrite. Neptune's festival (Neptunalia) took place in the heat of summer (July 23), when fresh water was scarcest. In art Neptune is often given Poseidon's attributes, the trident and dolphin.

Neptune holding his trident, classical sculpture; in the Lateran Museum, Rome

Alinari

Art Resource

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▪ Roman god

Latin  Neptunus, in Roman religion,  originally  the god of freshwater; by 399 Bc 

 he was identified with the Greek Poseidon and thus became a deity of the sea. His female counterpart, Salacia, was perhaps originally a goddess of leaping springwater, subsequently equated with the Greek Amphitrite.

      Neptune's festival (Neptunalia) took place in the heat of the summer (July 23), when water was scarcest; thus, its purpose was probably the propitiation of the freshwater deity. Neptune had a temple in the Circus Flaminius at Rome; one of its features was a sculptured group of marine deities headed by Poseidon and Thetis. In art Neptune appears as the Greek Poseidon, whose attributes are the trident and the dolphin.

▪ planet

Introduction

      third most massive planet of the solar system and the eighth planet from the Sun. Because of its great distance from Earth, it cannot be seen with the unaided eye. With a small telescope, it appears as a tiny, faint blue-green disk. It is designated by the symbol ♆.

       Planetary data for Neptune Planetary data for NeptuneNeptune is named for the Roman god of the sea, who is identified with the Greek deity Poseidon, a son of the Titan Cronus (the Roman god Saturn) and a brother of Zeus (the Roman god Jupiter). It is the second planet to have been found by means of a telescope. Its discovery in 1846 was a remarkable combination of the application of solid Newtonian physics and a belief in a numerological scheme that later proved to be scientifically unfounded (see below Neptune's discovery (Neptune)). Neptune's orbit is almost perfectly circular; as a result, its distance from the Sun varies comparatively little over its nearly 164-year period of revolution. Although the dwarf planet Pluto's mean distance from the Sun is greater than Neptune's, its orbit is so eccentric (elongated) that for about 20 years of each revolution Pluto is actually nearer the Sun than is Neptune.

      Neptune is almost four times the size of Earth but slightly smaller than Uranus, which makes it the smallest in diameter of the four giant, or Jovian, planets. It is more massive than Uranus, however, having a density roughly 25 percent higher. Like the other giant planets, Neptune consists primarily of hydrogen, helium, water, and other volatile compounds, along with rocky material, and it has no solid surface. It receives less than half as much sunlight as Uranus, but heat escaping from its interior makes Neptune slightly warmer than Uranus. The heat liberated may also be responsible for the storminess in Neptune's atmosphere, which exhibits the fastest winds seen on any planet in the solar system.

      Neptune has more than a dozen moons (natural satellites), only two of which had been discovered before the Voyager 2 spacecraft flew past the planet in 1989, and a system of rings, which had been unconfirmed until Voyager's visit. As is the case for Uranus, most of what astronomers know about Neptune, including its rotation period and the existence and characteristics of its magnetic field and magnetosphere, was learned from a single spacecraft encounter. In recent years new knowledge of the Neptunian system has come as a result of advances in Earth-based observational technology.

Basic astronomical data

      Neptune's orbital period of 163.72 years means that by mid-2010 it will have circled the Sun only once since its discovery in September 1846. Consequently, astronomers expect to be making refinements in calculating its orbital size and shape well into the 21st century. Voyager 2's encounter with Neptune resulted in a small upward revision of the planet's estimated mean distance from the Sun, which is now thought to be 4,498,250,000 km (2,795,083,000 miles). Its orbital eccentricity of 0.0086 is the second lowest of the planets; only Venus's orbit is more circular. Neptune's rotation axis is tipped toward its orbital plane by 29.6°, somewhat larger than Earth's 23.4°. As on Earth, the axial tilt gives rise to seasons on Neptune, and, because of the circularity of Neptune's orbit, the seasons (and the seasons of its moons) are of nearly equal length, each nearly 41 years in duration.

       Planetary data for NeptuneNeptune's rotation period was established when Voyager 2 detected radio bursts associated with the planet's magnetic field and having a period of 16.11 hours. This value was inferred to be the rotation period at the level of the planet's interior where the magnetic field is rooted. Neptune's equatorial diameter measured at the one-bar pressure level (the pressure of Earth's atmosphere at sea level) is 49,528 km (30,775 miles), which is only about 3 percent shy of the diameter of Uranus. Because of a flattening of the poles caused by the planet's relatively fast rotation, Neptune's polar diameter is 848 km (527 miles) less than its diameter at the equator. Although Neptune occupies a little less volume than Uranus, owing to its greater density—1.64 grams per cubic cm, compared with about 1.3 for Uranus—Neptune's mass is 18 percent higher. For additional orbital and physical data about Neptune, see the table (Planetary data for Neptune).

The atmosphere

 Like the other giant planets, Neptune's outer atmosphere is composed predominantly of hydrogen and helium. Near the one-bar pressure level in the atmosphere, these two gases contribute nearly 98 percent of the atmospheric molecules. Most of the remaining molecules consist of methane gas. Hydrogen and helium are nearly invisible, but methane strongly absorbs red light. Sunlight reflected off Neptune's clouds therefore exits the atmosphere with most of its red colours removed and so has a bluish cast. Although Uranus's blue-green colour is also the result of atmospheric methane, Neptune's colour is a more vivid, brighter blue, presumably an effect of the presence of an unidentified atmospheric gas.

      The temperature of Neptune's atmosphere varies with altitude. A minimum temperature of about 50 kelvins (K; −370 °F, −223 °C) occurs at a pressure near 0.1 bar. The temperature increases with decreasing pressure—i.e., with increasing altitude—to about 750 K (890 °F, 480 °C) at a pressure of a hundred-billionth of a bar, which corresponds to an altitude of 2,000 km (1,240 miles) as measured from the one-bar level, and it remains uniform above that altitude. Temperatures also increase with increasing depth below the 0.1-bar level to about 7,000 K (12,000 °F, 6,700 °C) near the centre of the planet, where the pressure may reach five megabars. The total amount of energy radiated by Neptune is equivalent to that of a nonreflecting sphere of the same size with a uniform temperature of 59.3 K (−353 °F, −214 °C). This temperature is called the effective temperature.

      Neptune is more than 50 percent farther from the Sun than is Uranus and so receives less than half the sunlight of the latter. Yet the effective temperatures of these two giant planets are nearly equal. Uranus and Neptune each reflect—and hence also must absorb—about the same proportion of the sunlight that reaches them. As a result of processes not fully understood, Neptune emits more than twice the energy (internal energy) that it receives from the Sun. The added energy is generated in Neptune's interior. Uranus, by contrast, has little energy escaping from its interior.

      At the one-bar reference level, the mean temperature of Neptune's atmosphere is roughly 74 K (−326 °F, −199 °C). Atmospheric temperatures are a few degrees warmer at the equator and poles than at mid-latitudes. This is probably an indication that air currents are rising near mid-latitudes and descending near the equator and poles. This vertical flow may extend to great heights within the atmosphere. A more vertically confined horizontal wind system exists near the cloud tops. As with the other giant planets, Neptune's atmospheric circulation exhibits zonal flow—the winds are constrained to blow generally along lines of constant latitude (east-west) and are relatively invariable with time. Winds on Neptune range from about 100 metres per second (360 km [220 miles] per hour) in an easterly direction (prograde, or in the same direction as the planet's spin) near latitude 70° S to as high as 700 metres per second (2,520 km [1,570 miles] per hour) in a westerly direction (retrograde, or opposite to the planet's spin) near latitude 20° S.

  The high winds and relatively large amount of escaping internal heat may be responsible for the turbulence observed in Neptune's visible atmosphere by Voyager 2. Two large dark ovals were clearly visible in Voyager images of Neptune's southern hemisphere. The largest, called the Great Dark Spot because of its similarity in latitude and shape to Jupiter's Great Red Spot, is comparable to Earth in size. It was near this storm system that the highest wind speeds were measured. Jupiter's Great Red Spot has been seen in Earth-based telescopes for more than 300 years. Neptune's Great Dark Spot was expected by analogy to be similarly long-lived. Scientists thus were surprised by its absence from images of Neptune obtained by the Earth-orbiting Hubble Space Telescope in 1991, only two years after the Voyager flyby, just as they were by the appearance of a comparable dark spot in Neptune's northern hemisphere in 1994. Bright cloud features seen in the Voyager images are even more transient; they may be methane ice clouds created by strong upward motions of pockets of methane gas to higher, colder altitudes in the atmosphere, where the gas then condenses to ice crystals.

 Neptune is the only giant planet to display cloud shadows cast by high dispersed clouds on a lower, more continuous cloud bank. The higher clouds, probably composed of methane ice crystals, are generally located 50–100 km (30–60 miles) above the main cloud deck, which may be composed of ice crystals of ammonia or hydrogen sulfide. Like the other giant planets, Neptune is thought to possess cloud layers at deeper levels, below those visible to Voyager's remote sensing instruments, but their composition is dependent on the relative amounts of gases composed of compounds of sulfur and nitrogen. Clouds of water ice are expected to occur at depths within Neptune's atmosphere where the pressure exceeds 100 bars.

The magnetic field (magnetic field) and magnetosphere

      Neptune, like most of the other planets in the solar system, possesses an internally generated magnetic field, first detected in 1989 by Voyager 2. Like Earth's magnetic field, Neptune's field can be represented approximately by that of a dipole (similar to a bar magnet), but its polarity is essentially opposite to that of Earth's present field. A magnetic compass on Neptune would point toward south instead of north. Earth's field is thought to be generated by electric currents flowing in its liquid iron core, and electric currents flowing within the outer cores of liquid metallic hydrogen in Jupiter and Saturn may similarly be the source of their magnetic fields. The magnetic fields of Earth, Jupiter, and Saturn are relatively well centred within the respective planets and aligned within about 12° of the planetary rotation axes. Uranus and Neptune, by contrast, have magnetic fields that are tilted from their rotation axes by almost 59° and 47°, respectively. Furthermore, the fields are not internally well centred. Uranus's field is offset by 31 percent of the planet's radius. Neptune's field, having an offset of 55 percent of the radius, is centred in a portion of the interior that is actually closer to the cloud tops than to the planetary centre. The unusual configurations of the magnetic fields of Uranus and Neptune have led scientists to speculate that these fields may be generated in processes occurring in the upper layers of the planetary interiors. (See also Uranus: The magnetic field and magnetosphere (Uranus).)

      The magnetic field of Neptune (and of the other planets) is approximately apple-shaped, with the stem end and the opposite end oriented in the directions of the magnetic poles. The solar wind, a stream of electrically charged particles that flows outward from the Sun, distorts that regular shape, compressing it on the sunward side of the planet and stretching it into a long tail in the direction away from the Sun. Trapped within the magnetic field are charged particles, predominantly protons and electrons. The region of space dominated by Neptune's magnetic field and charged particles is called its magnetosphere. Because of the high tilt of Neptune's magnetic field, the particles trapped in the magnetosphere are repeatedly swept past the orbits of the moons and rings. Many of these particles may be absorbed by the moons and ring material, effectively emptying from the magnetosphere a large fraction of its charged particle content. Neptune's magnetosphere is populated with fewer protons and electrons per unit volume than that of any other giant planet. Near the magnetic poles, the charged particles in the magnetosphere can travel along magnetic field lines into the atmosphere. As they collide with gases there, they cause those gases to fluoresce, resulting in classical, albeit weak, auroras.

Interior structure and composition

      Although Neptune has a mean density slightly less than 30 percent of Earth's, it is the densest of the giant planets. This implies that a larger percentage of Neptune's interior is composed of melted ices and molten rocky materials than is the case for the other giant planets.

      The distribution of these heavier elements and compounds is poorly known. Voyager 2 data suggest that Neptune is unlikely to have a distinct inner core of molten rocky materials surrounded by an outer core of melted ices of methane, ammonia, and water. The relatively slow rotation of 16.11 hours measured by Voyager was about one hour longer than would be expected from such a layered interior model. Scientists have concluded that the heavier compounds and elements, rather than being centrally condensed, may be spread almost uniformly throughout the interior. In this respect, as in many others, Neptune resembles Uranus far more than it does the larger giants Jupiter and Saturn. (For additional discussion of layered and mixed models as they apply to the Uranian interior, see Uranus: The interior (Uranus).)

      The large fraction of Neptune's total heat budget derived from the planet's interior may not necessarily imply that Neptune is hotter at its centre than Uranus. Multiple stratified layers in the deep Uranian atmosphere may serve to insulate the interior, trapping within the planet the radiation that more readily escapes from Neptune. Images of Uranus from Earth as Uranus approaches an equinox and thus as the Sun begins to illuminate the equatorial regions more directly seem to show an increasingly active atmosphere. This may imply that discrete atmospheric activity on both Uranus and Neptune is more dependent on solar radiation than on the relative amounts of heat escaping from the interior.

Neptune's moons and rings

      Neptune has at least 13 moons and six known narrow rings. Each of the myriad particles that constitute the rings can be considered a tiny moon in its own orbit. The four moons nearest the planet orbit within the ring system, where at least some of them may interact gravitationally with the ring particles, keeping them from spreading out.

Moons (moon)

      Prior to Voyager 2's encounter, Neptune's only known moons were Triton, discovered visually through a telescope in 1846, and Nereid, discovered in telescopic photographs more than a century later, in 1949. (Neptune's moons are named after figures in Greek mythology usually connected with Poseidon [the Roman god Neptune] or with water.) With a diameter nearly that of Earth's Moon, Triton is, by far, Neptune's largest satellite—more than six times the size of its largest known sibling, Proteus, discovered by Voyager 2 in 1989. Triton is the only large moon of the solar system that travels around its planet in retrograde fashion. Moreover, whereas the orbits of the largest moons in the solar system are inclined less than about 5° to their planet's equator, Triton's orbit is tilted more than 157° to Neptune's equator. Nereid, which revolves more than 15 times farther from Neptune on average than does Triton, has the most eccentric orbit of any known moon. At its greatest distance, Nereid is nearly seven times as far from Neptune as at its smallest distance. Even at its closest approach, Nereid is nearly four times the distance of Triton.

       Moons of NeptuneIn 1989 Voyager's (Voyager) observations added six previously unknown moons to Neptune's system. All are less than half of Triton's distance from Neptune and are regular moons—i.e., they travel in prograde, nearly circular orbits that lie near Neptune's equatorial plane. In 2002–03 five additional tiny moons, estimated to be about 15–30 km (9–18 miles) in radius, were discovered in Earth-based observations. These are irregular, having highly eccentric orbits that are inclined at large angles to the planet's equator; three also orbit in the retrograde direction. Their mean distances from Neptune lie roughly between 15 million and 48 million km (9 million and 30 million miles), well outside the orbit of Nereid. Properties of the known Neptunian moons are summarized in the table (Moons of Neptune). Names and orbital and physical characteristics are listed separately for Triton, Nereid, and the six moons found by Voyager.

      Of Voyager's six discoveries, all but Proteus orbit Neptune in less time than it takes the planet to rotate. Hence, to an observer positioned near Neptune's cloud tops, these five would appear to rise in the west and set in the east. Voyager observed two of its discoveries, Proteus and Larissa, closely enough to detect both their size and approximate shape. Both bodies are irregular in shape and appear to have heavily cratered surfaces. The sizes of the other four are estimated from a combination of distant images and their brightnesses, based on the assumption that they reflect about as much light as Proteus and Larissa—about 7 percent. Proteus, with a mean radius of about 208 km (129 miles), is a little larger than Nereid, with a mean radius of about 170 km (106 miles). Because Proteus is so near to Neptune, however, scientists on Earth had been unable to detect it in the planet's glare. The other five moons are much smaller, each having a mean radius of less than 100 km (60 miles).

      Voyager did not observe Nereid at close range, but data from the probe indicate that it has a nearly spherical shape. Voyager detected no large variations in brightness as Nereid rotated. Although the spacecraft was unable to determine a rotation period, the moon's highly elliptical orbit makes it unlikely that it is in synchronous rotation—i.e., that its rotation and orbital periods are equal. The rotation period of Triton is synchronous, and those of Neptune's other inner moons are probably synchronous or very nearly so.

       Moons of NeptuneTriton is similar in size, density, and surface composition to the dwarf planet Pluto. Its highly inclined, retrograde orbit suggests that it is a captured object, which perhaps formed originally, like Pluto, as an independent icy planetesimal in the outer solar system. Its original orbit would have been highly eccentric, but tidal (tide) interactions between Triton and Neptune—cyclic deformations in each body caused by the gravitational attraction of the other—eventually would have reshaped its path around Neptune into a circle. The process of Triton's capture and circularization of its orbit would have severely disrupted any previously existing system of moons that had formed along with Neptune from a disk of protoplanetary material. Nereid's radical orbit may be one consequence of this process (although the possibility that Nereid too is a captured object has not been ruled out). Moons that were in orbit between Proteus and Nereid would have been ejected from the Neptunian system, thrown into Neptune itself, or absorbed by the molten Triton. Even those moons orbiting closer to Neptune would not have escaped some disruption. The present orbits of Naiad through Proteus (see the table (Moons of Neptune)) are probably very different from their original orbits, and these moons may be only fragments of the original bodies that formed with Neptune. Subsequent bombardment by Neptune-orbiting debris and by meteoroids from interplanetary space may have further altered their sizes, shapes, and orbits.

The ring system

 Evidence that Neptune has one or more rings arose in the mid-1980s when stellar occultation studies from Earth occasionally showed a brief dip in the star's brightness just before or after the planet passed in front of it. Because dips were seen only in some studies and never symmetrically on both sides of the planet, scientists concluded that any rings present do not completely encircle Neptune but instead have the form of partial rings, or ring arcs.

      Images from Voyager 2, however, revealed a system of six rings, each of which in fact fully surrounds Neptune. The putative arcs turned out to be bright regions in the outermost ring, named Adams, where the density of ring particles is particularly high. Although rings also encircle each of the other three giant planets, none displays the striking clumpiness of Adams. The arcs are found within a 45° segment of the ring. From leading to trailing, the most prominent are named Courage, Liberté, Egalité 1, Egalité 2, and Fraternité. They range in length from about 1,000 km (600 miles) to more than 10,000 km (6,000 miles). Although the moon Galatea, which orbits just planetward of the inner edge of Adams, may gravitationally interact with the ring to trap ring particles temporarily in such arclike regions, collisions between ring particles should eventually spread the constituent material relatively uniformly around the ring. Consequently, it is suspected that the event that supplied the material for Adams's enigmatic arcs—perhaps the breakup of a small moon—occurred within the past few thousand years.

      The other five known rings of Neptune—Galle, Le Verrier, Lassell, Arago, and Galatea, in order of increasing distance from the planet—lack the nonuniformity in density exhibited by Adams. Le Verrier, which is about 110 km (70 miles) in radial width, closely resembles the nonarc regions of Adams. Similar to the relationship between the moon Galatea and the ring Adams, the moon Despina orbits Neptune just planetward of the ring Le Verrier. Each moon may gravitationally repel particles near the inner edge of its respective ring, acting as a shepherd moon to keep ring material from spreading inward. (For fuller treatments of shepherding effects, see Saturn: Moons: Orbital and rotational dynamics (Saturn); Uranus: The ring system (Uranus).)

       Rings of NeptuneGalle, the innermost ring, is much broader and fainter than either Adams or Le Verrier, possibly owing to the absence of a nearby moon that could provide a strong shepherding effect. Lassell consists of a faint plateau of ring material that extends outward from Le Verrier about halfway to Adams. Arago is the name used to distinguish a narrow, relatively bright region at the outer edge of Lassell. Galatea is the name generally used to refer to a faint ring of material spread all along the orbit of the moon Galatea. Characteristics of the rings are summarized in the table (Rings of Neptune).

      None of Neptune's rings were detected from scattering effects on Voyager's radio signal propagating through the rings, which indicates that they are nearly devoid of particles in the centimetre size range or larger. The fact that the rings were most visible in Voyager images when backlit by sunlight implies that they are largely populated by dust-sized particles, which scatter light forward much better than back toward the Sun and Earth. Their chemical makeup is not known, but, like the rings of Uranus, the surfaces of Neptune's ring particles (and possibly the particles in their entirety) may be composed of radiation-darkened methane ices.

      The suspected youthfulness of Adams's ring arcs and the arguments offered can be extended to Neptune's rings in general. The present rings are narrow, and scientists have found it difficult to explain how the orbits of the known moons can effectively confine the natural radial spreading of the rings. This has led many to speculate that Neptune's present rings may be much younger than the planet itself, perhaps substantially less than a million years. The present ring system may be markedly different from any that existed a million years ago. It is even possible that the next spacecraft to visit Neptune's rings will find a system greatly evolved from the one Voyager 2 imaged in 1989.

Observations from Earth

Neptune's discovery

      Neptune is the only giant planet that is not visible without a telescope. Having an apparent magnitude of 7.8, it is approximately one-fifth as bright as the faintest stars visible to the unaided eye. Hence, it is fairly certain that there were no observations of Neptune prior to the use of telescopes. Galileo is credited as the first person to view the heavens with a telescope in 1609. His sketches from a few years later, the first of which was made on Dec. 28, 1612, suggest that he saw Neptune when it passed near Jupiter but did not recognize it as a planet.

      Prior to the discovery of Uranus by the English astronomer William Herschel (Herschel, Sir William) in 1781, the consensus among scientists and philosophers alike was that the planets in the solar system were limited to six—Earth plus those five planets that had been observed in the sky since ancient times. Knowledge of a seventh planet almost immediately led astronomers and others to suspect the existence of still more planetary bodies. Additional impetus came from a mathematical curiosity that has come to be known as Bode's law, or the Titius-Bode law. In 1766 Johann Daniel Titius (Titius, Johann Daniel) of Germany noted that the then-known planets formed an orderly progression in mean distance from the Sun that could be expressed as a simple mathematical equation. In astronomical units (AU; the mean Sun-Earth distance), Mercury's distance is very nearly 0.4; the distances of Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn are approximately 0.4 + (0.3 × 2ⁿ), in which n is 0, 1, 2, 4, and 5, respectively, for the five planets. The astronomer Johann Elert Bode (Bode, Johann Elert), also of Germany, published the law in 1772 in a popular introductory astronomy book, proposing that the missing 3 in the progression might indicate an as-yet-undiscovered planet between Mars and Jupiter.

      The suggestion was met with little enthusiasm until the mean distance of Uranus, at 19.2 AU, was noted to be very nearly equal to that predicted by Bode's law (19.6 AU) for n = 6. Moreover, when the first asteroids, beginning with the discovery of Ceres in 1801, were found to be in orbit between Mars and Jupiter, they satisfied the n = 3 case of the equation.

      Some astronomers were so impressed by the seeming success of Bode's law that they proposed the name Ophion for the large planet that the law told them must lie beyond Uranus for the n = 7 case, at a distance of 38.8 AU. In addition to this scientifically unfounded prediction, observations of Uranus provided actual evidence for the existence of another planet. Uranus was not following the path predicted by Newton's laws of motion and the gravitational forces exerted by the Sun and the known planets. Furthermore, more than 20 recorded prediscovery sightings of Uranus dating back as far as 1690 disagreed with the calculated positions of Uranus for the respective time at which each observation was made. It appeared possible that the gravitational attraction of an undiscovered planet was perturbing the orbit of Uranus.

      In 1843 the British mathematician John Couch Adams (Adams, John Couch) began a serious study to see if he could predict the location of a more distant planet that would account for the strange motions of Uranus. Adams communicated his results to the astronomer royal, George B. Airy (Airy, Sir George Biddell), at Greenwich Observatory, but they apparently were considered not precise enough to begin a reasonably concise search for the new planet. In 1845 Urbain-Jean-Joseph Le Verrier (Le Verrier, Urbain-Jean-Joseph) of France, unaware of Adams's efforts in Britain, began a similar study of his own.

      By mid-1846 the English astronomer John Herschel (Herschel, Sir John, 1st Baronet), son of William Herschel, had expressed his opinion that the mathematical studies under way could well lead to the discovery of a new planet. Airy, convinced by Herschel's arguments, proposed a search based on Adams's calculations to James Challis (Challis, James) at Cambridge Observatory. Challis began a systematic examination of a large area of sky surrounding Adams's predicted location. The search was slow and tedious because Challis had no detailed maps of the dim stars in the area where the new planet was predicted. He would draw charts of the stars he observed and then compare them with the same region several nights later to see if any had moved.

      Le Verrier also had difficulty convincing astronomers in his country that a telescopic search of the skies in the area he predicted for the new planet was not a waste of time. On September 23, 1846, he communicated his results to the German astronomer Johann Gottfried Galle (Galle, Johann Gottfried) at the Berlin Observatory. Galle and his assistant Heinrich Louis d'Arrest (Arrest, Heinrich Louis d') had access to detailed star maps of the sky painstakingly constructed to aid in the search for new asteroids. Galle and d'Arrest identified Neptune as an uncharted star that same night and verified the next night that it had moved relative to the background stars.

      Although Galle and d'Arrest have the distinction of having been the first individuals to identify Neptune in the night sky, credit for its “discovery” arguably belongs to Le Verrier for his calculations of Neptune's direction in the sky. At first the French attempted to proclaim Le Verrier as the sole discoverer of the new planet and even suggested that the planet be named after him. The proposal was not favourably received outside France, both because of Adams's reported contribution and because of the general reluctance to name a major planet after a living individual. Neptune's discovery was eventually credited to both Adams and Le Verrier, although it now appears likely that Adams's contribution was less substantial than earlier believed. It is nevertheless appropriate that the more traditional practice of using names from ancient mythology for planets eventually prevailed.

      The discovery of Neptune finally laid Bode's law to rest. Instead of being near the predicted 38.8 AU, Neptune was found to be only 30.1 AU from the Sun. This discrepancy, combined with the lack of any scientific explanation as to why the law should work, discredited it. The discovery in 1930 of Pluto, regarded as the ninth planet at the time, at a distance of 39.5 AU was even more at variance with the equation's prediction of 77.2 AU for n = 8. Not even the proximity of Pluto's mean distance to the 38.8 AU predicted for n = 7 could resurrect the credibility of Bode's law.

Later observations from Earth

      Earth-based observations of Neptune before Voyager 2's flyby suffered greatly as a consequence of the planet's enormous distance from both Earth and the Sun. Its average orbital radius of 30.1 AU means that the sunlight reaching its moons and its upper atmosphere is barely 0.1 percent as bright as that at Earth. Pre-Voyager telescopic viewing of Neptune through the full thickness of Earth's atmosphere could not resolve features smaller than about one-tenth of Neptune's diameter, even under the best observing conditions. Most such observations concentrated on determining Neptune's size, mass, density, and orbital parameters and searching for moons. In the early 21st century specialized interferometric techniques have routinely improved spatial resolution of distant objects by factors of 10–100 over earlier surface-based observations.

      From time to time astronomers reported seeing visual markings in the Neptunian atmosphere, but not until the use of high-resolution infrared charge-coupled device (CCD) cameras (see telescope: Charge-coupled devices (telescope)) in the 1980s could such observations be repeated with enough consistency to permit determination of an approximate rotation period for Neptune. Spectroscopic observations (spectroscopy) from Earth revealed the presence of hydrogen and methane in the planet's atmosphere. By analogy with the other giant planets, helium was also expected to be present. Infrared and visual studies revealed that Neptune has an internal heat source.

      By the mid-1990s the fully operational Hubble Space Telescope (HST) was enabling images and other data concerning Neptune to be collected outside the filtering and distorting effects of Earth's atmosphere. The orbiting infrared Spitzer Space Telescope also succeeded in imaging Neptune with a resolution much higher than those available from Earth's surface in the 1980s. In addition, astronomers have developed techniques for minimizing the effects of atmospheric distortion from Earth-based observation. The most successful of these, known as adaptive optics, continually processes information from infrared star images and applies it nearly instantaneously to correct the shape of the telescope mirror and thereby compensate for the distortion. As a consequence, large Earth-based telescopes now routinely achieve resolutions better than those of the HST. Images of Neptune obtained with adaptive optics allow studies of this distant planet at resolutions approaching those from the Voyager 2 encounter.

Spacecraft exploration

  Voyager 2 is the only spacecraft to have encountered the Neptunian system. It and its twin, Voyager 1—both launched in 1977—originally were slated to visit only Jupiter and Saturn, but the timing of Voyager 2's launch gave its trajectory the leeway needed for the spacecraft to be redirected, with a gravity assist from Saturn, on extended missions to Uranus and then to Neptune.

      Voyager 2 flew past Neptune and its moons on August 24–25, 1989, observing the system almost continuously between June and October of that year. It measured the planet's radius and interior rotation rate and detected its magnetic field, determining that the latter is both highly inclined and offset from the planet's rotation axis. It confirmed that Neptune has rings and discovered six new moons. Neptune previously had been thought too cold to support active weather systems, but Voyager's images of the planet revealed the highest atmospheric winds seen in the solar system and several large-scale storms, one the size of Earth.

      Because Neptune was Voyager 2's last planetary destination, mission scientists risked sending the spacecraft closer to it than to any other planet during the mission. Voyager passed about 5,000 km (3,100 miles) above Neptune's north pole. A few hours later it passed within 40,000 km (24,800 miles) of Triton, which allowed it to gather high-resolution images of the moon's highly varied surface as well as precise measurements of its radius and surface temperature.

Ellis D. Miner

Additional Reading

Ellis D. Miner and Randii R. Wessen, Neptune: The Planet, Rings, and Satellites (2001), is a popular work that updates the knowledge of Neptune and its system following the 1989 encounter of Voyager 2. J. Kelly Beatty, Carolyn Collins Petersen, and Andrew Chaikin (eds.), The New Solar System, 4th ed. (1999), contains chapters written by experts for nonscientists about the atmosphere, interior, rings, and moons of Neptune and the other giant planets. By far the most comprehensive and current treatise on Neptune is Dale P. Cruikshank (ed.), Neptune and Triton (1995). A set of articles in Science, 246(4936):1417–1501 (December 15, 1989), comprises the initial report of the Voyager findings at Neptune; more detailed reports of the findings are in a set of articles in Journal of Geophysical Research, Supplement, 96:18,903–19,268 (October 30, 1991); and in Eric Burgess, Far Encounter: The Neptune System (1991), a popular work that also contains some discussion of Pluto. Patrick Moore, The Planet Neptune: An Historical Survey Before Voyager, 2nd ed. (1996), provides a good summary of pre-Voyager knowledge of the planet. Mark Littmann, Planets Beyond: Discovering the Outer Solar System, updated and rev. ed. (1990, reissued 2004), chronicles the history of the discovery of Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto.Ellis D. Miner

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