Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The Kuiper belt is a ring of small icy worlds, similar to the asteroid belt but far larger, extending from Neptune's orbit at 30 AU out to about 55 AU from the Sun. [145] Much in the same way that Jupiter's gravity dominates the asteroid belt, Neptune's gravity dominates the Kuiper belt. Over the age of the Solar System, certain regions of the ...
The planet Neptune was mathematically predicted before it was directly observed. With a prediction by Urbain Le Verrier , telescopic observations confirming the existence of a major planet were made on the night of September 23–24, Autumnal Equinox of 1846, [ 1 ] at the Berlin Observatory , by astronomer Johann Gottfried Galle (assisted by ...
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 ...
Triton is the largest natural satellite of the planet Neptune. It is the only moon of Neptune massive enough to be rounded under its own gravity and hosts a thin, hazy atmosphere. 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.
Within the Solar System, the planet with the largest Hill radius is Neptune, with 116 million km, or 0.775 au; its great distance from the Sun amply compensates for its small mass relative to Jupiter (whose own Hill radius measures 53 million km).
Beyond Neptune, many sub-planet sized objects formed. Several thousand trans-Neptunian objects have been observed. Unlike the planets, these trans-Neptunian objects mostly move on eccentric orbits, inclined to the plane of the planets. The positions of the planets might have shifted due to gravitational interactions. [2]
The fly-by of the Neptunian system provided the first accurate measurement of Neptune's mass, which was found to be 0.5 percent less than previously calculated. The new figure disproved the hypothesis that an undiscovered Planet X acted upon the orbits of Neptune and Uranus. [9] [10]
Similarly, Pluto may cross the orbit of Neptune, but Neptune long ago locked Pluto and its attendant Kuiper belt objects, called plutinos, into a 3:2 resonance, i.e., they orbit the Sun twice for every three Neptune orbits. The orbits of these objects are entirely dictated by Neptune's gravity, and thus, Neptune is gravitationally dominant. [63]