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In the Solar System, it is the fourth-largest planet by diameter, the third-most-massive planet, and the densest giant planet. Neptune is 17 times the mass of Earth and is slightly more massive than its near-twin Uranus, which is 15 times the mass of Earth and slightly larger than Neptune. [a] Neptune orbits the Sun once every 164.8 years at an ...
In Roman mythology, Neptune was the god of the sea, identified with the Greek Poseidon. The demand for a mythological name seemed to be in keeping with the nomenclature of the other planets, all of which were named for deities in Greek and Roman mythology. [f] [54] Most languages today use some variant of the name "Neptune" for the planet.
This list contains a selection of objects 50 and 99 km in radius (100 km to 199 km in average diameter). The listed objects currently include most objects in the asteroid belt and moons of the giant planets in this size range, but many newly discovered objects in the outer Solar System are missing, such as those included in the following ...
The Great Dark Spot was captured by NASA's Voyager 2 space probe in Neptune's southern hemisphere. The dark, elliptically shaped spot (with initial dimensions of 13,000 × 6,600 km, or 8,100 × 4,100 mi), was about the same size as Earth, and was similar in general appearance to Jupiter's Great Red Spot.
Nereid orbits Neptune in the prograde direction at an average distance of 5,504,000 km (3,420,000 mi), but its high eccentricity of 0.749 takes it as close as 1,381,500 km (858,400 mi) and as far as 9,626,500 km (5,981,600 mi). [4] Nereid's highly eccentric orbit around Neptune.
2012 HE 85 is a small, resonant trans-Neptunian object from the Kuiper belt, located in the outermost region of the Solar System, approximately 74 kilometers (46 miles) in diameter. It was first observed by a team of astronomers using one of the Magellan Telescopes in Chile during the New Horizons KBO Search on 18 April 2012, in order to find a ...
Naiad / ˈ n eɪ ə d /, (also known as Neptune III and previously designated as S/1989 N 6) named after the naiads of Greek legend, [10] is the innermost satellite of Neptune and the nearest to the center of any gas giant with moons with a distance of 48,224 km from the planet's center. Its orbital period is less than a Neptunian day ...
Proteus is the second-largest moon of Neptune and is the largest of its regular prograde moons. It is about 420 km (260 mi) in diameter, larger than Nereid, Neptune's third-largest moon. It was not discovered by Earth-based telescopes because Proteus orbits so close to Neptune that it is lost in the glare of reflected sunlight. [15]