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Neptune (Latin: Neptūnus [nɛpˈtuːnʊs]) is the god of freshwater and the sea in the Roman religion. [1] He is the counterpart of the Greek god Poseidon. [2] In the Greek-inspired tradition, he is a brother of Jupiter and Pluto, with whom he presides over the realms of heaven, the earthly world (including the underworld), and the seas. [3]
The term retrograde is from the Latin word retrogradus – "backward-step", the affix retro-meaning "backwards" and gradus "step". Retrograde is most commonly an adjective used to describe the path of a planet as it travels through the night sky, with respect to the zodiac, stars, and other bodies of the celestial canopy. In this context, the ...
Triton orbits Neptune in a retrograde orbit—revolving in the opposite direction to the parent planet's rotation—the only large moon in the Solar System to do so. [ 3 ] [ 13 ] Triton is thought to have once been a dwarf planet from the Kuiper belt , captured into Neptune's orbit by the latter's gravity .
A celestial object's axial tilt indicates whether the object's rotation is prograde or retrograde. Axial tilt is the angle between an object's rotation axis and a line perpendicular to its orbital plane passing through the object's centre. An object with an axial tilt up to 90 degrees is rotating in the same direction as its primary.
All but the outer two are within Neptune-synchronous orbit (Neptune's rotational period is 0.6713 day or 16 hours [20]) and thus are being tidally decelerated. Naiad, the closest regular moon, is also the second smallest among the inner moons (following the discovery of Hippocamp), whereas Proteus is the largest regular moon and the second ...
Typically, the stated rotation period for a giant planet (such as Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune) is its internal rotation period, as determined from the rotation of the planet's magnetic field. For objects that are not spherically symmetrical, the rotation period is, in general, not fixed, even in the absence of gravitational or tidal forces
Neptune brightened about 10% between 1980 and 2000 mostly due to the changing of the seasons. [177] Neptune may continue to brighten as it approaches perihelion in 2042. The apparent magnitude currently ranges from 7.67 to 7.89 with a mean of 7.78 and a standard deviation of 0.06. [18] Prior to 1980, the planet was as faint as magnitude 8.0. [18]
Several symbols were proposed for Neptune to accompany the suggested names for the planet. Claiming the right to name his discovery, Urbain Le Verrier originally proposed the name Neptune [33] and the symbol of a trident, [34] while falsely stating that this had been officially approved by the French Bureau des Longitudes. [33]