Sea-green Like Uranus

Neptune, as the planet was named, is the twin of Uranus, as Venus is of the earth. Its diameter is about 31,000 miles, its’ mass 17 times that of the earth and its surface gravity 1.1 times that of the earth. The planet's disk is circular, and sea-green like that of Uranus. The two worlds are probably very much alike in their physical constitution. The spectroscope shows strong bands of methane, requiring a layer 25 miles deep to produce them in the atmosphere of Neptune. The distance of Neptune from the sun is 30 times the distance of our own planet, or about 2,800,000,000 miles, and as it takes nearly 165 years to make one revolution, it has not yet completed two-thirds of one trip around the sun since the date of its discovery. Neptune is invisible to the naked eye since it is about equal in brightness to a star of eighth magnitude, but it can be seen with the aid of binoculars.

Its disk is so small that it is not easily observable without considerable magnification. Like Uranus it was observed and mistaken for a star a number of times before its discovery. Neptune has only one satellite, sometimes called Triton, which was discovered within a month of the discovery of the planet. It moves backward in its orbit. It is a faint object of 14th magnitude, but actually is even larger than our own moon. Pluto, the third planet to be discovered, was found on photographic plates taken at the Lowell Observatory in a systematic search for a trans-Neptunian planet. Percival Lowell, founder of the Lowell Observatory, had made mathematical calculations that indicated the possible existence of a small planet in the constellation Gemini, where C. W. Tombaugh, an assistant at the Lowell Observatory, actually discovered the planet on January 23, 1930.

It appeared on a photographic plate as a very faint object moving the amount required in the prediction. The small object was observed for two months at the Lowell Observatory before the discovery was announced. It was found by examination of old plates taken at different observatories as far back as 1914, and this was a great advantage in the determination of its orbit. Pluto has moved, since the date of its discovery, from Gemini into Cancer. Its period of revolution around the sun is 248 years and its distance from the sun is 39 times the distance of the earth from the sun, or about 3,675,000,000 miles. Its orbit has such a high eccentricity that its distance from the sun varies by as much as 1,830,000,000 miles and at perihelion it comes 49,000,000 miles inside Neptune's orbit.

The relative positions of the two orbits are such that they cannot intersect, however, and the two planets cannot approach closer than 240,000,000 miles.

By: davidbunch

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