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The average distance between Neptune and the Sun is 4.5 billion km (about 30.1 astronomical units (AU), the mean distance from the Earth to the Sun), and it completes an orbit on average every 164.79 years, subject to a variability of around ±0.1 years. The perihelion distance is 29.81 AU, and the aphelion distance is 30.33 AU.
Earth's magnetic field deflects most of the solar wind, whose charged particles would otherwise strip away the ozone layer that protects the Earth from harmful ultraviolet radiation. [4] One stripping mechanism is for gas to be caught in bubbles of the magnetic field, which are ripped off by solar winds. [5]
Planetary magnetic poles are defined analogously to the Earth's North and South magnetic poles: they are the locations on the planet's surface at which the planet's magnetic field lines are vertical. The direction of the field determines whether the pole is a magnetic north or south pole, exactly as on Earth.
The magnetic field of Mars is the magnetic field generated from Mars's interior. Today, Mars does not have a global magnetic field. However, Mars did power an early dynamo that produced a strong magnetic field 4 billion years ago, comparable to Earth's present surface field. After the early dynamo ceased, a weak late dynamo was reactivated (or ...
The source of lower energy protons is believed to be proton diffusion, due to changes in the magnetic field during geomagnetic storms. [23] Due to the slight offset of the belts from Earth's geometric center, the inner Van Allen belt makes its closest approach to the surface at the South Atlantic Anomaly. [24] [25]
Study of Earth's magnetosphere began in 1600, when William Gilbert discovered that the magnetic field on the surface of Earth resembled that of a terrella, a small, magnetized sphere. In the 1940s, Walter M. Elsasser proposed the model of dynamo theory, which attributes Earth's magnetic field to the motion of Earth's iron outer core.
If the pressure from particles within the magnetosphere is neglected, it is possible to estimate the distance to the part of the magnetosphere that faces the Sun.The condition governing this position is that the dynamic ram pressure from the solar wind is equal to the magnetic pressure from the Earth's magnetic field: [note 1] (()) where and are the density and velocity of the solar wind, and ...
Their field strengths are intermediate between those of the gas giants and those of the terrestrial planets, being 50 and 25 times that of Earth's, respectively. The equatorial magnetic field strengths of Uranus and Neptune are respectively 75 percent and 45 percent of Earth's 0.305 gauss. [ 16 ]