Interesting Facts about Neptune

Neptune the Roman God of Sea and Oceans, the Greek called it Poseidon, is at the eight place (last place) in our solar system. That being said, Neptune is 3rd largest planet with respect to the total mass, 4th largest in diameter in our solar system.

Fact No. 1: Orbital Time Period around Sun

Neptune is one more slow walker, it takes approximately 165 earth years for Neptune to complete one rotation around Sun. If you are watching this video, then let me tell you, on july 11th 2011 you witnessed Neptune celebrate its first birthday (i.e. one complete rotation around sun) since its discovery in year 1846 by Jean Joseph Le Verrier.

Fact No. 2: Hidden from Ancient Civilization

There are very less mentions, or we can say no mention about Neptune in Ancient and Medieval Civilization, because this planet is not visible by bare naked eye. Earlier it was known as Le Verrier, but later got renamed to Neptune.

Fact No. 3: Massive Gravitational Pull and Distance

Neptune has massive gravitational pull, i.e. its gravity is second largest after Jupiter in our solar system. Neptune is 4,498,396,441 km away from Sun i.e. 30 AU. To put it into human understandable perspective, this distance is approximately 30 times more than, recorded distance between Earth and Sun (i.e. 1 AU).

Fact No. 4: Great Dark Spot and Small Dark Spot

Neptune has storm similar to Jupiter's "Great Red Spot", it is commonly referred as "Great Dark Spot" which is the size of Earth.

Fact No. 5: Quicker on Rotation around Axis

Neptune spins very quickly on its axis. Neptune's equatorial atmosphere take only 18 hours to complete one rotation around itself . May be because Neptune has no solid body to stand on.

Fact No. 6: Our Visit to Neptune

So far only one spacecraft, the Voyager 2, has flown past Neptune. This was back in year 1989 and Voyager 2 clicked the first close-up images of the God of Sea. To give you an idea of Neptune's distance from earth, it took 246 minutes (4.1 hours) for signals from Voyager 2 to reach back to Earth.

Fact No. 7: Climate and Environment on Neptune

The climate on Neptune is extremely active. In its upper atmosphere, large storms sweep across it and high-speed solar winds track around the planet at up to 1,340 km per second. The Great Dark Spot (the largest storm) detected on Neptune in year 1989 was around for five years.

Fact No. 8: Rings of Neptune

Like the other outer planets, Neptune has a ring system, but it is very faint though. These rings comprises of basic ingredients to create life, ice particles and grains of dust with a carbon-based substance.

Fact No. 9: Moons Around Neptune

Neptune has 14 known moons. The largest of these moons is Titan - a frozen icy world which spits out particles of nitrogen ice and dust from below its surface. Triton, was discovered immediately 17 days after Neptune itself was spotted first. Scientist and researchers believed that Titan was caught by the immense gravitational pull of Neptune and is regarded as one of the coldest worlds in our solar system.

Fact No. 10: Temperature (Definitely no go place)

Average surface temperature on Neptune is about -214°C (-353°F). It would take only few minutes for any living organism to freeze to death.