Interesting and amazing facts about the planet Neptune

Neptune is the eighth planet from the Sun and the smallest of the gas giants. Neptune was the first planet found by mathematical prediction after unexpected changes in the orbit of Uranus were observed. Neptune is named after the Roman god of the sea.

1. I hope that you enjoy reading my 15 fun facts about Neptune and find them interesting!
2. Neptune is a large planet, nearly four times the size of Earth.
3. Neptune suffers the most violent weather in our Solar System.
4. Storms have been spotted swirling around its surface and freezing winds that blow about ten times faster than hurricanes on Earth make it the windiest planet.
5. Neptune is a large, water planet with a blue hydrogen-methane atmosphere and faint rings.
6. Neptune is covered in thin wispy white clouds which stretch out around the planet.
7. Neptune is the eighth planet from the Sun and the smallest of the gas giants. Neptune was the first planet
8. found by mathematical prediction after unexpected changes in the orbit of Uranus were observed. Neptune is named after the Roman god of the sea.
9. 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.
10. It takes one hundred sixty-five Earth years for Neptune to make one complete orbit around the Sun.
11. However, the average surface temperature is only ­355 degrees fahrenheit. That is very cold.
12. 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.
13. Neptune has 8 moons. The biggest ones are Triton and Nereid. Triton is even bigger than the planet Pluto!
14. 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 1989.
15. Neptune is the 8th planet in the Solar System and the most distant from the Sun. At one time, Pluto was the most distant, but it lost its status as a planet.
16. Neptune is named after the Roman god of the sea.
17. It is the fourth largest planet in the Solar System. It is about four times the size of the Earth.
18. Neptune is a gaseous planet, mainly made up of hydrogen, helium, and methane.
19. Only one spacecraft has visited Neptune, Voyager 2 in 1989.
20. Neptune experiences the most violent weather of all the planets in our Solar System, with winds that reach speeds of speed of 2,000 km/hour..
21. A day on Neptune lasts only 16 hours in Earth time.
22. A Neptune year lasts for 165 Earth years.
23. Gravity on Neptune is actually pretty similar to Earth with only a 17 percent difference. That means that if you weigh 70 pounds (32 kg) on Earth, you would weigh 78.5 pounds (36 kg) on Neptune.
24. Neptune’s color appears as blue because of the methane in its atmosphere which reflects the blue wavelengths of light from the Sun.
25. Because it is so far from the Sun, Neptune is one of the coldest planets in the Solar System, with an average temperature of around -200° Celsius.
26. Neptune has 13 known moons. The biggest of the planet’s moons is called Triton, which was discovered in 1846 by the English astronomer William Lassell. His discovery of Triton happened only 17 days after the discovery of Neptune itself.
27. Triton is gradually getting nearer to the planet and it is thought that eventually it will get so close, it will be ripped apart by Neptune’s gravity and form rings, rather like Saturn’s.
28. Triton is also interesting because it orbits Neptune in the opposite direction to the way that Neptune rotates. It is the only large moon in our Solar System that is known to do this.
29. In 2003, there was a NASA proposal to send another spacecraft to Neptune. The plan was that it would be launched in around 2016 and take somewhere between 8 and 12 years to reach the planet. This plan appears to have been shelved, however.