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Dark, cold, and whipped by supersonic winds, ice giant Neptune is the eighth and most distant planet in our solar system. More than 30 times as far from the Sun as Earth, Neptune is the only planet in our solar system not visible to the naked eye.
Neptune orbits our Sun, a star, and is the eighth planet from the Sun at a distance of about 2.8 billion miles (4.5 billion kilometers).
Neptune is the eighth and most distant planet from the Sun. It’s the fourth largest, and the first planet discovered with math.
A planet is a celestial body that (a) is in orbit around the Sun, (b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, and (c) has cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit.
Triton is the largest of Neptune's 13 moons. It is unusual because it is the only large moon in our solar system that orbits in the opposite direction of its planet's rotation―a retrograde orbit. Scientists think Triton is a Kuiper Belt Object captured by Neptune's gravity millions of years ago.
Our solar system extends much farther than the eight planets that orbit the Sun. The solar system also includes the Kuiper Belt that lies past Neptune's orbit. This is a sparsely occupied ring of icy bodies, almost all smaller than the most popular Kuiper Belt Object – dwarf planet Pluto.
Dwarf planet Pluto is a member of a group of objects that orbit in a disc-like zone beyond the orbit of Neptune called the Kuiper Belt. This distant realm is populated with thousands of miniature icy worlds, which formed early in the history of our solar system about 4.5 billion years ago.
As Uranus and Neptune drifted farther outward, they passed through the dense disk of small, icy bodies left over after the giant planets formed. Neptune's orbit was the farthest out, and its gravity bent the paths of countless icy bodies inward toward the other giants.
Planet Compare More Destinations Click for more Jupiter Click for more Earth Click for more Mercury Click for more Mars Click for more Venus Click for more ... Neptune; DWARF PLANETS Pluto; Ceres; Makemake; Haumea; Eris; HYPOTHETICAL Planet X; Moons. About Moons; BY DESTINATION Earth (1) Mars (2) Jupiter (95) Saturn (83) Uranus (27) Neptune (14)
In the outer solar system, the gas giants Jupiter and Saturn and the ice giants Uranus and Neptune have dozens of moons. As these planets grew in the early solar system, they were able to capture smaller objects with their large gravitational fields.