The Hunt. A three-quarter mile trail walk from dead-end dirt road NF-160 starting at the communication towers near GC1X56X. Plastic jar.
Name. Neptune was the ocean god, his symbol the trident. Neptune had to wait until modern times to have a planet named in his honor. After discovery, the eighth planet was named Neptune, not for any particular reason, but because Neptune was one important god who did not have a planet named after him.
Factoids. Neptune is the fourth and last gas giant in the outer Solar System, similar in size and structure to Uranus but much farther away. Invisible to the naked eye and easily mistaken for a star with small telescopes, Neptune was discovered by mathematical calculation based on its gravitational effect on Uranus. Although discovered in 1846, Neptune did not return to the position where scientists first saw it until 2011.
Along with Uranus, Neptune is referred to as an "ice giant." Its cloud tops are among the coldest place in the Solar System at 55 K (-360 F), and its winds reach 1300 mph. The planet's vivid blue color is caused by methane and other as yet unknown components in the atmosphere. Neptune has 13 identified moons. Triton is by far the largest and is thought to be a captured dwarf planet.
- Distance from Sun = 30 AU (2.8 billion miles)
- Diameter = 3.9 Earths (31,000 miles)
- Length of year in Earth years = 165
- Satellites = 13
- Mean surface temperature = 72 K (-330 F)
- Weight of 100 pounds on surface = 113
Exploration. The only close observation of Neptune and its moon Triton was done by Voyager 2 (launched in 1977) in 1989, 3 years after its Uranus encounter. The spacecraft studied the planet's weather, magnetic field, moons and faint rings before heading off out of the Solar System. The flyby of Triton produced spectacular photos of a geologically active surface. Follow-up visits have been proposed but none are planned.
