Fun fact 10 of 10
10. Neptune was discovered by calculation before it was seen
Neptune was the first planet found on paper. Astronomers noticed that Uranus was straying from its predicted path, calculated where the planet pulling it must be, and found it in 1846, close to the indicated point.
A planet revealed by mathematics
After Uranus was discovered in 1781, astronomers began tracking its orbit and noticed that the planet sometimes ran ahead and sometimes fell behind the calculations. The suspicion was that another, more distant planet was pulling Uranus with its gravity.
The Frenchman Urbain Le Verrier did the calculations and indicated the position of the unknown planet; in England, John Couch Adams reached a similar prediction. In September 1846, Johann Galle, from the Berlin Observatory, pointed the telescope at the region indicated by Le Verrier and found Neptune on the first night of searching.
Neptune lies about 4.5 billion kilometers from the Sun and takes about 165 years to complete one orbit. In 2011, it completed its first orbit since its discovery.
It is also the planet with the fastest winds in the Solar System. The Voyager 2 probe, which flew past it in 1989, recorded winds of more than 1,700 kilometers per hour, faster than the speed of sound on Earth.
Did you know? Neptune is blue because of methane in its atmosphere, which absorbs red light. A 2024 analysis showed that it is less dark blue than it appeared in older photos, which had enhanced colors.
The 10 fun facts in this list
- A day on Venus lasts longer than a year on Venus
- Saturn would float in a giant bathtub
- Sunlight takes 8 minutes to reach us
- The Sun holds almost all the mass of the Solar System
- Footprints on the Moon can last millions of years
- In space there is no sound
- A teaspoon of neutron star would weigh billions of tons
- On the Space Station, the Sun rises about 16 times a day
- Mars has the largest known volcano in the Solar System
- Neptune was discovered with a calculation before it was seen
Where this information comes from: NASA (Venus, Saturn, Moon, Space Station, Mars, Neptune and the sonification of Perseus); The Planetary Society (Saturn's rings); studies on energy transport in the Sun; University of Oxford, 2024 (color of Neptune).
