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Its sidereal rotation period (day) is roughly 16.11 hours. [12] Because its axial tilt is comparable to Earth's, the variation in the length of its day over the course of its long year is not any more extreme. Because Neptune is not a solid body, its atmosphere undergoes differential rotation. The wide equatorial zone rotates with a period of ...
Venus rotates clockwise, and Uranus has been knocked on its side and rotates almost perpendicular to the rest of the Solar System. The ecliptic remains within 3° of the invariable plane over five million years, [ 2 ] but is now inclined about 23.44° to Earth's celestial equator used for the coordinates of poles.
According to the IAU's explicit count, there are eight planets in the Solar System; four terrestrial planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars) and four giant planets, which can be divided further into two gas giants (Jupiter and Saturn) and two ice giants (Uranus and Neptune). When excluding the Sun, the four giant planets account for more than ...
For gaseous or fluid bodies, such as stars and giant planets, the period of rotation varies from the object's equator to its pole due to a phenomenon called differential rotation. 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 ...
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 average distance of 30.1 astronomical units (4.50 × 10 9 km).
Neptune's rings had been observed from Earth many years prior to Voyager 2 's visit, but the close inspection revealed that the ring systems were full circle and intact, and a total of four rings were counted. [4] Voyager 2 discovered six new small moons orbiting Neptune's equatorial plane, dubbed Naiad, Thalassa, Despina, Galatea, Larissa and ...
Rings of Neptune imaged by the James Webb Space Telescope's NIRCam instrument. The rings of Neptune consist primarily of five principal rings.They were first discovered (as "arcs") by simultaneous observations of a stellar occultation on 22 July 1984 by André Brahic's and William B. Hubbard's teams at La Silla Observatory (ESO) and at Cerro Tololo Interamerican Observatory in Chile. [1]
When the right-hand side of the equation is a positive real number, the solution corresponds to an epispiral. [22] When the argument θ 1 – θ 0 equals ±90°×k, the cosine goes to zero and the radius goes to infinity. Thus, when k is less than one, the range of allowed angles becomes small and the force is repulsive (red curve on right in ...