What Are Some Interesting Facts About Neptune?

Some things that are interesting about Neptune are facts about its composition.

The upper layer of its atmosphere consists of frozen methane and the lower, dark layer is made of hydrogen sulfide.
These layers swirl and move rapidly, up to 700 miles an hour, and occasionally there are huge storms that rotate like hurricanes, much like Jupiter’s Great Red Spot.
Neptune’s winds are the strongest in the whole solar system.
Most of Neptune is made of silicates, hydrogen, helium, and water. Scientists also think there may be a core of rock and ice.

Moons and Rings

Other interesting facts about Neptune concern its moons and rings:

There are 13 moons orbiting around Neptune.
Voyager 2 passed by Neptune in 1989 and recorded 11 moons at that time.
Since then, two small moons have been discovered by observers using large telescopes in Hawaii and Chile. They may have been formed from another moon colliding with some large object.
The largest moon is named Triton and it orbits in the opposite direction than the other moons.
This means that Neptune’s gravity probably captured Triton as it was flying by.
Triton is actually colder than Neptune and Neptune is the coldest planet in the solar system.
Surface temperatures can get down to -235 degrees Celsius.
Voyager 2 observed geysers or volcanoes that were spewing liquid nitrogen.
There are three rings that are fairly thick and one very faint ring. They are much smaller than the rings of Saturn and are made of dust.
In the outer ring the dust is not evenly spread out and this it baffling to scientists.

There are also interesting facts about Neptune that deal with how it was discovered and named:

Neptune is the farthest planet from the Sun since Pluto was declassified as a planet in 2006 by the International Astronomical Union.
Neptune is also the smallest of the gas giants.
Before Neptune was found, there were mathematical calculations that showed its presence.
Astronomers had noticed that Uranus was not always where they expected it to be, so they concluded that another planet’s gravity was influencing it.
Two people calculated where Neptune was at around the same time but in two different countries.
An English astronomer named John C. Adams was very accurate in his calculations and sent this information to the Astronomer Royal of England named Sir George B. Airy. For whatever reason, he did not look for the planet.
A French mathematician, Urbain J. J. Leverrier, was also working on the location of this unknown planet and he sent his information to Johann G. Galle, the director of the Urania Observatory in Berlin, Germany. Galle and his assistant discovered Neptune on September 23, 1846.
Because both man’s calculations were very close to each other, they are both credited, Adams and Leverrier, with Neptune’s discovery.
It is theorized that the name Neptune was picked because he was a major Roman god with no planet named after him. He was the god of the sea, brother to Jupiter, and his symbol, the trident, is used to represent Neptune.

Neptune is so far from Earth that it took Voyager 2 twelve years to get there and it cannot be seen without a telescope.
In size and color, it is almost a twin to Uranus.
Its diameter is 30,775 miles which is four times more than Earth’s.
Neptune’s orbit around the Sun takes 165 Earth years.
There are no definite plans to return to Neptune but NASA may send the Neptune Orbiter that way in 2016.

So, now you know plenty of interesting facts about Neptune.