In the 19th century, astronomers noticed an aberration in the orbit of Uranus, and Urbain Joseph Le Verrier, a French mathematician, went to work on the problem. Galileo first recorded its existence with his telescope, though he identified it as a star, misled by its slow orbit. It is impossible to see Neptune with the naked eye. IN 2011, HUMANITY MARKED NEPTUNE'S "FIRST" BIRTHDAY. (Plumes are ideal for sampling rather than building a lander, you can just fly a science spacecraft right through them.) A Neptunian day is short, at 16.11 hours long, but its years are a different story. Neptune is circled by six rings and has 14 moons, one of which is geologically active and blasting geysers into space. Its mass is 17.1 times that of Earth, and it's big (but not Jupiter big), with an equatorial radius of 15,300 miles. Its effective temperature, according to NASA, is -353☏. Neptune is about 30 times farther than we are from the Sun (2.8 billion miles to our 93 million miles)-the farthest in the solar system (aside from the dwarf planets).
IT HAS SIX RINGS AND 14 MOONS, ONE OF WHICH HAS GEYSERS BLASTING INTO SPACE. Here are a few things you might not know. Mental Floss spoke to Mark Hofstadter, a planetary scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, to learn more about this lesser-known planet. The eighth planet in the solar system, it is one half of the ice-giant system (the other half being Uranus), and among the most mysterious worlds circling our Sun. Neptune is like a celestial paint swatch: a stunning royal blue that demands attention.
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