yego.me
💡 Stop wasting time. Read Youtube instead of watch. Download Chrome Extension

Neptune 101 | National Geographic


2m read
·Nov 11, 2024

(Mysterious music)

[Narrator] Along the dark edges of the Solar System, it floats. Anchored by a star but barely graced by its warmth, this traveler drifts alone, as deceptively calm and elusive as the deep blue sea. Neptune is the eighth planet from the Sun.

At about 30 times the distance between our star and the Earth, or 30 astronomical units, Neptune is the most distant planet in our Solar System. This distance creates the longest orbit of the eight worlds, about 165 years, with the seasons lasting little over 40 Earth years each. Being so far away from the heat and light of the Sun, Neptune is cold, dark, and icy.

At its heart is a solid core about 1.5 times the size of Earth. Making up about 45% of the planet's mass, the core is made of water ice and silicate rock. The rest of the planet is believed to be a hot pressurized ocean of water, methane, and ammonia ices surrounded by a layer of clouds.

These clouds, predominantly made of hydrogen and helium, include traces of methane, which give this ocean world its rich blue color. While the clouds create a cool, calm veneer from afar, up close, they are whipped around by the most severe weather in the Solar System. Winds on the planet reach speeds of over 1,200 miles per hour, nearly five times faster than the strongest winds recorded on Earth.

In fact, the winds are so powerful that they break the sound barrier. Drifting high above this windy ice giant is a quiet ecosystem of rings and satellites. Six rings encircle the planet, with some containing ring arcs, or clusters of dust particles in a ring.

Also revolving around the planet are 14 known moons, with the largest called Triton. Named after the son of the ancient Greek sea god, Triton has ice volcanoes and may even contain a subsurface ocean. Much is left to be discovered about Neptune, its rings, and its moons.

Only one spacecraft, Voyager 2, has visited these cosmic bodies, but future missions to this mysterious icy world would have even more stories to tell.

More Articles

View All
The Simplest Math Problem No One Can Solve - Collatz Conjecture
This is the most dangerous problem in mathematics, one that young mathematicians are warned not to waste their time on. It’s a simple conjecture that not even the world’s best mathematicians have been able to solve. Paul Erdos, a famous mathematician, sai…
From the Frontlines to the Shorelines | Podcast | Overheard at National Geographic
[Music] Now for the marine forecast for Waters within five nautical miles from shore on Western Lake Superior, from Fort Wayne to Bayfield to Saxon Harbor, Wisconsin, and the outer Apostle Islands. It’s summer 2021, time of this radio broadcast. National…
New and Improved | Wicked Tuna
This is it, boys! Let’s make it happen. It’s the first day of the season, and I could not be more excited. Nothing’s stopping us this year, and we are going on a war path. We’re going to Main, and we’ve got to get it done. Main is where all the baas, and …
Optimal decision-making and opportunity costs | AP(R) Microeconomics | Khan Academy
What we’re going to do in this video is think about optimal decision making by rational agents. It’s just thinking about how would a logical someone with a lot of reasoning ability make optimal decisions and make the best decisions for themselves. Well, t…
Avni Patel Thompson at the Seattle Female Founders Conference
So the first speaker you’re gonna hear today is Omnipotent Thompson, the founder of Poppy. Poppy is a site that connects parents with great caregivers for their children. So Omni and her co-founder went through Y Combinator in Winter 2016. She’s also an i…
Why Does the Moon Orbit Earth?
Now tell me what does the moon do? Uh, the moon orbits the Earth. I know it. Let’s do an orbit. Can we do an orbit? Okay, so go like this. I’m guessing, I’m guessing around, around. If you will, you spinning it? Are you going to… doesn’t it stay? Isn’t it…