DEFINITION OF NEPTUNE

The eighth planet from the center of the solar system,

the giant Jovian planet Neptune orbits the Sun at a distance

of 2.5 billion miles (4.1 billion km, or 30.1 astronomical

units), completing each circuit every 165 years. Rotating about

its axis every 16 hours, Neptune has a diameter of 31,400

miles (50,530 km) and has a mass of more than 17.21 times

that of Earth. It has a density of 1.7 grams per cubic centimeter,

showing that the planet has a dense rocky interior sur-

rounded by metallic, molecular, and gaseous hydrogen, helium,

and methane, giving the planet its blue color.

Neptune is unusual in that it generates its own heat,

radiating 2.7 times more heat than it receives from the Sun.

The source of this heat is uncertain, but it may be heat

trapped from the planet’s formation that is only slowly

being released by the dense atmosphere. The cloud systems

that trap this heat are visible from Earth-based telescopes

and include some large hurricane-like storms such as the

former Great Dark Spot, a storm about the size of the

Earth, similar in many ways to the Great Red Spot on

Jupiter, but that has dissipated.

Neptune has two large moons visible from Earth, Triton

and Nereid, and six other smaller moons discovered by the

Voyager 2 spacecraft. Triton has a diameter of 1,740 miles

(2,800 km) and orbits Neptune at a distance of 220,000

miles (354,000 km) from the planet, and it is the only large

moon in the solar system that has a retrograde orbit.

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