LECTURE 7: THE PLANET NEPTUNE
Neptune (pronounced /ˈnɛptjuːn/[9], AmE: [ˈnɛp·tuːn] ) is the eighth and farthest planet from the Sun in the Solar System. It is the fourth largest planet by diameter, and the third largest by mass. Neptune is 17 times the mass of Earth and is slightly more massive than its near-twin Uranus, which is 15 Earth masses and less dense.[10] The planet is named after the Roman god of the sea. Its astronomical symbol is a stylized version of the god Neptune's trident.
Discovered on September 23, 1846,[1] Neptune was the first planet found by mathematical prediction rather than regular observation. Unexpected changes in the orbit of Uranus led astronomers to deduce the gravitational perturbation of an unknown planet. Neptune was found within a degree of the predicted position. The moon Triton was found shortly thereafter, but none of the planet's other 12 moons were discovered before the 20th century. Neptune has been visited by only one spacecraft, Voyager 2, which flew by the planet on August 25, 1989.
Neptune's atmosphere is primarily composed of hydrogen and helium along with traces of methane. The methane in the atmosphere, in part, accounts for the planet's blue appearance.[11] Neptune also has the strongest winds of any planet in the solar system, measured as high as 2,100 kilometres per hour (1,300 mph).[12] At the time of the 1989 Voyager 2 flyby, its southern hemisphere possessed a Great Dark Spot comparable to the Great Red Spot on Jupiter. Neptune's temperature at its cloud tops is usually close to −218 °C (55.1 K), one of the coldest in the solar system, due to its great distance from the Sun. The temperature in Neptune's centre is about 7,000 °C (7,270 K), which is comparable to the Sun's surface and similar to most other known planets. Neptune has a faint and fragmented ring system, which may have been detected during the 1960s but was only indisputably confirmed by Voyager 2.[13]
Galileo's drawings show that he first observed Neptune on December 28, 1612, and again on January 27, 1613; on both occasions, Galileo mistook Neptune for a fixed star when it appeared very close—in conjunction—to Jupiter in the night sky.[14] Hence he is not credited with Neptune's discovery. During the period of his first observation in December 1612, it was stationary in the sky because it had just turned retrograde that very day. This apparent backward motion is created when the orbit of the Earth takes it past an outer planet. Since Neptune was only beginning its yearly retrograde cycle, the motion of the planet was far too slight to be detected with Galileo's small telescope.[15]
In 1821, Alexis Bouvard published astronomical tables of the orbit of Uranus.[16] Subsequent observations revealed substantial deviations from the tables, leading Bouvard to hypothesize that an unknown body was perturbing the orbit through gravitational interaction. In 1843, John Couch Adams calculated the orbit of a hypothesized eighth planet that would account for Uranus' motion. He sent his calculations to Sir George Airy, the Astronomer Royal, who asked Adams for a clarification. Adams began to draft a reply but never sent it and did not aggressively pursue work on the Uranus problem.[17][18]
In 1845–46, Urbain Le Verrier, independently of Adams, rapidly developed his own calculations but also experienced difficulties in encouraging any enthusiasm in his compatriots. In June, however, upon seeing Le Verrier's first published estimate of the planet's longitude and its similarity to Adams's estimate, Airy persuaded Cambridge Observatory director James Challis to search for the planet. Challis vainly scoured the sky throughout August and September.[19][20]
Meantime, Le Verrier by letter urged Berlin Observatory astronomer Johann Gottfried Galle to search with the observatory's refractor. Heinrich d'Arrest, a student at the observatory, suggested to Galle that they could compare recently drawn chart of the sky in the region of Le Verrier's predicted location with the current sky to seek the displacement characteristic of a planet, as opposed to a fixed star. The very evening of the day of receipt of Le Verrier's letter, Neptune was discovered, September 23, 1846, within 1° of where Le Verrier had predicted it to be, and about 12° from Adams' prediction. Challis later realized that he had observed the planet twice in August, failing to identify it owing to his casual approach to the work.[19][21]
In the wake of the discovery, there was much nationalistic rivalry between the French and the British over who had priority and deserved credit for the discovery. Eventually an international consensus emerged that both Le Verrier and Adams jointly deserved credit. However, the issue is now being re-evaluated by historians with the rediscovery in 1998 of the "Neptune papers" (historical documents from the Royal Observatory, Greenwich), which had apparently been misappropriated by astronomer Olin J. Eggen for nearly three decades and were only rediscovered (in his possession) immediately after his death.[22] After reviewing the documents, some historians now suggest that Adams does not deserve equal credit with Le Verrier. Since 1966 Dennis Rawlins has questioned the credibility of Adams's claim to co-discovery. In a 1992 article in the journal Dio he deemed the British claim "theft".[23] "Adams had done some calculations but he was rather unsure about quite where he was saying Neptune was", said Nicholas Kollerstrom of University College London in 2003.[24][25]
Shortly after its discovery, Neptune was referred to simply as "the planet exterior to Uranus" or as "Le Verrier's planet". The first suggestion for a name came from Galle, who proposed the name Janus. In England, Challis put forward the name Oceanus.[26]
Claiming the right to name his discovery, Le Verrier quickly proposed the name Neptune for this new planet, while falsely stating that this had been officially approved by the French Bureau des Longitudes.[27] In October, he sought to name the planet Le Verrier, after himself, and he was patriotically supported in this by the observatory director, François Arago. However, this suggestion met with stiff resistance outside France.[28] French almanacs quickly reintroduced the name Herschel for Uranus, after that planet's discoverer Sir William Herschel, and Leverrier for the new planet.[29]
Struve came out in favor of the name Neptune on December 29, 1846, to the Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences.[30] Soon Neptune became the internationally accepted name. 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, except for Uranus and Earth, were named for Roman gods.[31]
From its discovery until 1930, Neptune was the farthest known planet. Upon the discovery of Pluto in 1930, Neptune became the penultimate planet, save for a 20-year period between 1979 and 1999 when Pluto fell within its orbit.[32] However, the discovery of the Kuiper belt in 1992 led many astronomers to debate whether or not Pluto should be considered a planet in its own right or as part of the belt's larger structure.[33][34] In 2006, the International Astronomical Union defined the word "planet" for the first time, reclassifying Pluto as a "dwarf planet" and making Neptune once again the last planet in the Solar System.[35]
With a mass of 1.0243×1026 kg,[5] Neptune is an intermediate body between Earth and the larger gas giants: its mass is seventeen times that of the Earth but just 1/19th that of Jupiter.[10] Neptune's equatorial radius of 24,764 km[6] is nearly four times that of the Earth. Neptune and Uranus are often considered a sub-class of gas giant termed "ice giants", due to their smaller size and higher concentrations of volatiles relative to Jupiter and Saturn.[36] In the search for extrasolar planets Neptune has been used as a metonym: discovered bodies of similar mass are often referred to as "Neptunes",[37] just as astronomers refer to various extra-solar "Jupiters."
Neptune's internal structure resembles that of Uranus. Its atmosphere forms about 5–10% of its mass and extends perhaps 10–20% of the way towards the core, where it reaches pressures of about 10 GPa. Increasing concentrations of methane, ammonia, and water are found in the lower regions of the atmosphere.[38]
Gradually this darker and hotter region condenses into a superheated liquid mantle, where temperatures reach 2–5,000 K. The mantle is equivalent to 10–15 Earth masses, and is rich in water, ammonia, methane, and other compounds.[1] As is customary in planetary science, this mixture is referred to as icy even though it is a hot, highly dense fluid. This fluid, which has a high electrical conductivity, is sometimes called a water–ammonia ocean.[39] At a depth of 7,000 km, the conditions may be such that methane decomposes into diamond crystals that then precipitate toward the core.[40]
The core of Neptune is composed of iron, nickel and silicates, with an interior model giving a mass about 1.2 times that of the Earth.[41] The pressure at the centre is 7 Mbar—millions of times more than that on the surface of the Earth, and the temperature may be 5,400 K.[38][42]
At high altitudes, Neptune's atmosphere is 80% hydrogen and 19% helium.[38] A trace amount of methane is also present. Prominent absorption bands of methane occur at wavelengths above 600 nm, in the red and infrared portion of the spectrum. As with Uranus, this absorption of red light by the atmospheric methane is part of what gives Neptune its blue hue,[43] although Neptune's vivid azure differs from Uranus's milder aquamarine. Since Neptune's atmospheric methane content is similar to that of Uranus, some unknown atmospheric constituent is thought to contribute to Neptune's colour.[11]
Neptune's atmosphere is divided into two main regions; the lower troposphere, where temperature decreases with altitude, and the stratosphere, where temperature increases with altitude. The boundary between the two, the tropopause, occurs at a pressure of 0.1 bars.[44] The stratosphere then gives way to the thermosphere at a pressure lower than 10−4–10−5 microbars.[44] The thermosphere gradually transitions to the exosphere.
Models suggest that Neptune's troposphere is banded by clouds of varying compositions depending on altitude. The upper level clouds occur at pressures below one bar, where the temperature is suitable for methane to condense. For pressures between one and five bars, clouds of ammonia and hydrogen sulfide are believed to form. Above a pressure of five bars, the clouds may consist of ammonia, ammonium sulfide, hydrogen sulfide and water. Deeper clouds of water ice should be found at pressures of about 50 bars, where the temperature reaches 0 C. Underneath, clouds of ammonia and hydrogen sulfide may be found.[45]
High altitude clouds on Neptune have been observed casting shadows on the opaque cloud deck below. There are also high altitude cloud bands that wrap around the planet at constant latitude. These circumferential bands have widths of 50–150 km, and lie about 50–110 km above the cloud deck.[46]
Neptune's spectra suggest that its lower stratosphere is hazy due to condensation of products of ultraviolet photolysis of methane, such as ethane and acetylene.[38][44] The stratosphere is also home to trace amounts of carbon monoxide and hydrogen cyanide.[44][47] The stratosphere of Neptune is warmer than that of Uranus due to elevated concentration of hydrocarbons.[44]
For reasons that remain obscure, the planet's thermosphere is at an anomalously high temperature of about 750 K.[48][49] The planet is too far from the Sun for this heat to be generated by ultraviolet radiation. One candidate for a heating mechanism is atmospheric interaction with ions in the planet's magnetic field. Other candidates are gravity waves from the interior that dissipate in the atmosphere. The thermosphere contains traces of carbon dioxide and water, which may have been deposited from external sources such as meteorites and dust.[45][47]
Neptune also resembles Uranus in its magnetosphere, with a magnetic field strongly tilted relative to its rotational axis at 47° and offset at least 0.55 radii (about 13,500 kilometres) from the planet's physical centre. Before Voyager 2's arrival at Neptune, it was hypothesised that Uranus's tilted magnetosphere was the result of its sideways rotation. However, in comparing the magnetic fields of the two planets, scientists now think the extreme orientation may be characteristic of flows in the planets' interiors. This field may be generated by convective fluid motions in a thin spherical shell of electrically conducting liquids (probably a combination of ammonia, methane and water)[45] resulting in a dynamo action.[50]
The magnetic field at the equatorial surface of Neptune is estimated at 1.42 μT, for a magnetic moment of 2.16×1017 Tm3. Neptune's magnetic field has a complex geometry that includes relatively large contributions from non-dipolar components, including a strong quadrupole moment that may exceed the dipole moment in strength. By contrast, Earth, Jupiter and Saturn only have relatively small quadrupole moments and their fields are less tilted from the polar axis. The large quadrupole moment of Neptune may be the result of offset from the planet's center and geometrical constraints of the field's dynamo generator.[51][52]
Neptune's bow shock, where the magnetosphere begins to slow the solar wind, occurs at a distance of 34.9 times the radius of the planet. The magnetopause, where the pressure of the magnetosphere counterbalances the solar wind, lies at a distance of 23–26.5 times the radius of Neptune. The tail of the magnetosphere extends out to at least 72 times the radius of Neptune, and very likely much further.[51]
Neptune has a planetary ring system, though one much less substantial than that of Saturn. The rings may consist of ice particles coated with silicates or carbon-based material, which most likely gives them a reddish hue.[53] In addition to the narrow Adams Ring, 63,000 km from the centre of Neptune, the Leverrier Ring is at 53,000 km and the broader, fainter Galle Ring is at 42,000 km. A faint outward extension to the Leverrier Ring has been named Lassell; it is bounded at its outer edge by the Arago Ring at 57,000 km.[54]
The first of these planetary rings was discovered in 1968 by a team led by Edward Guinan,[13][55] but it was later thought that this ring might be incomplete.[56] Evidence that the rings might have gaps first arose during a stellar occultation in 1984 when the rings obscured a star on immersion but not on emersion.[57] Images by Voyager 2 in 1989 settled the issue by showing several faint rings. These rings have a clumpy structure,[58] the cause of which is not currently understood but which may be due to the gravitational interaction with small moons in orbit near them.[59]
The outermost ring, Adams, contains five prominent arcs now named Courage, Liberté, Egalité 1, Egalité 2, and Fraternité (Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity).[60] The existence of arcs was difficult to explain because the laws of motion would predict that arcs would spread out into a uniform ring over very short timescales. Astronomers now believe that the arcs are corralled into their current form by the gravitational effects of Galatea, a moon just inward from the ring.[61][62]
Earth-based observations announced in 2005 appeared to show that Neptune's rings are much more unstable than previously thought. Images taken from the W. M. Keck Observatory in 2002 and 2003 show considerable decay in the rings when compared to images by Voyager 2. In particular, it seems that the Liberté arc might disappear in as little as one century.[63]
One difference between Neptune and Uranus is the typical level of meteorological activity. When the Voyager 2 spacecraft flew by Uranus in 1986, that planet was visually quite bland. In contrast Neptune exhibited notable weather phenomena during the 1989 Voyager 2 fly-by.[64]
Neptune's weather is characterized by extremely dynamic storm systems, with winds reaching near-supersonic speeds of nearly 600 m/s.[66] More typically, by tracking the motion of persistent clouds, wind speeds have been shown to vary from 20 m/s in the easterly direction to 325 m/s westward.[67] At the cloud tops, the prevailing winds range in speed from 400 m/s along the equator to 250 m/s at the poles.[45] Most of the winds on Neptune move in a direction opposite the planet's rotation.[68] The general pattern of winds showed prograde rotation at high latitudes vs. retrograde rotation at lower latitudes. The difference in flow direction is believed to be a "skin effect" and not due to any deeper atmospheric processes.[44] At 70° S latitude, a high speed jet travels at a speed of 300 m s−1.[44]
The abundance of methane, ethane and acetylene at Neptune's equator is 10–100 times greater than at the poles. This is interpreted as evidence for upwelling at the equator and subsidence near the poles.[44]
In 2007 it was discovered that the upper troposphere of Neptune's south pole was about 10°C (10 K) warmer than the rest of Neptune, which averages approximately −200 °C (73.1 K).[69] The warmth differential is enough to let methane gas, which elsewhere lies frozen in Neptune's upper atmosphere, leak out through the south pole and into space. The relative 'hot spot' is due to Neptune's axial tilt, which has exposed the south pole to the Sun for the last quarter of Neptune's year, or roughly 40 Earth years. As Neptune slowly moves towards the opposite side of the Sun, the south pole will be darkened and the north pole illuminated, causing the methane release to shift to the north pole.[70]
Because of seasonal changes, the cloud bands in the southern hemisphere of Neptune have been observed to increase in size and albedo. This trend was first seen in 1980 and is expected to last until about 2020. The long orbital period of Neptune results in seasons lasting forty years.[71]
In 1989, the Great Dark Spot, an anti-cyclonic storm system spanning 13,000 × 6,600 km,[64] was discovered by NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft. The storm resembled the Great Red Spot of Jupiter. However, on November 2, 1994, the Hubble Space Telescope did not see the Great Dark Spot on the planet. Instead, a new storm similar to the Great Dark Spot was found in the planet's northern hemisphere.[72]
The Scooter is another storm, a white cloud group further south than the Great Dark Spot. Its nickname is due to the fact that when first detected in the months before the 1989 Voyager 2 encounter it moved faster than the Great Dark Spot.[68] Subsequent images revealed even faster clouds. The Small Dark Spot is a southern cyclonic storm, the second most intensive storm observed during the 1989 encounter. It initially was completely dark, but as Voyager 2 approached the planet, a bright core developed and can be seen in most of the highest resolution images.[73]
Neptune's dark spots are thought to occur in the troposphere at lower altitudes than the brighter cloud features,[74] so they appear as holes in the upper cloud decks. As they are stable features that can persist for several months, they are thought to be vortex structures.[46] Often associated with dark spots are brighter, persistent methane clouds that form around the tropopause layer.[75] The persistence of companion clouds shows that some former dark spots may continue to exist as a cyclone even though they are no longer visible as a dark feature. Dark spots may also dissipate either when they migrate too close to the equator or possibly through some other unknown mechanism.[76]
ther when compared to Uranus is believed to be due in part to its higher internal heat.[77] Although Neptune lies half again as far from the Sun as Uranus, and receives only 40% its amount of sunlight,[44] the two planets' surface temperatures are roughly equal.[77] The upper regions of Neptune's troposphere reach a low temperature of −221.4 °C (51.7 K). At a depth where the atmospheric pressure equals 1 bar, the temperature is −201.15 °C (72.0 K).[78] Deeper inside the layers of gas, however, the temperature rises steadily. As with Uranus, the source of this heating is unknown, but the discrepancy is larger: Uranus only radiates 1.1 times as much energy as it receives from the Sun;[79] Neptune radiates about 2.61 times as much, which means the internal heat source generates 161% of the solar input.[80] Neptune is the farthest planet from the Sun, yet its internal energy is sufficient to drive the fastest planetary winds seen in the Solar System. Several possible explanations have been suggested, including radiogenic heating from the planet's core,[81] dissociation of methane into hydrocarbon chains under atmospheric pressure,[82][81] and convection in the lower atmosphere that causes gravity waves to break above the tropopause.[83][84]
The average distance between Neptune and the Sun is 4.55 billion km (about 30.1 times the average distance from the Earth to the Sun, or 30.1 AU) and it completes an orbit every 164.79 years. On July 12, 2011, Neptune will have completed the first full orbit since its discovery in 1846,[85][4] although it will not appear at its exact discovery position in our sky due to the Earth being in a different location in its 365.25 day orbit.
The elliptical orbit of Neptune is inclined 1.77° compared to the Earth. Because of an eccentricity of 0.011, the distance from Neptune and the Sun varies by 101 million km between perihelion and aphelion, or the nearest and most distant points of the planet along the orbital path respectively.[2]
The axial tilt of Neptune is 28.32°,[86] which is similar to the tilt of Earth and Mars. As a result this planet experiences similar seasonal changes. However, the long orbital period of Neptune means that the seasons last for forty Earth years.[71] Its sidereal rotation period (day) is roughly 16.11 hours long.[4] Since its axial tilt is comparable to the Earth's (23°), the variation in the length of its days 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 about 18 hours, which is slower than the 16.1 hour rotation of the planet's magnetic field. By contrast, the reverse is true for the polar regions where the rotation period is 12 hours. This differential rotation is the most pronounced of any planet in the Solar System,[87] and it results in strong latitudinal wind shear.[46]
Neptune's orbit has a profound impact on the region directly beyond it, known as the Kuiper belt. 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.[88] Much in the same way that Jupiter's gravity dominates the asteroid belt, shaping its structure, so Neptune's gravity completely dominates the Kuiper belt. Over the age of the Solar System, certain regions of the Kuiper belt become destabilized by Neptune's gravity, creating gaps in the Kuiper belt's structure. The region between 40 and 42 AU is an example.[89]
There do, however, exist orbits within these empty regions where objects can survive for the age of the Solar System. These resonances occur when an object's orbit around the Sun is a precise fraction of Neptune's, such as 1/2, or 3/4. If, say, an object orbits the Sun once for every two Neptune orbits, it will only complete half an orbit every time Neptune returns to its original position, and so will always be on the other side of the Sun. The most heavily populated resonant orbit in the Kuiper belt, with over 200 known objects,[90] is the 2/3 resonance. Objects in this orbit complete 1 orbit for every 1½ of Neptune's, and are known as Plutinos because the largest of the Kuiper belt objects, Pluto, lies among them.[91] Although Pluto crosses Neptune's orbit regularly, the 2/3 resonance means they can never collide.[92] Other, less populated resonances exist at 3/4, 3/5, 4/7 and 2/5.[93]
Neptune possesses a number of trojan objects, which occupy its L4 and L5 points; gravitationally stable regions leading and trailing it in its orbit. Neptune trojans are often described as being in a 1/1 resonance with Neptune. Neptune trojans are remarkably stable in their orbits and are unlikely to have been captured by Neptune, but rather to have formed alongside it.[94]
The formation of the ice giants, Neptune and Uranus, has proven difficult to model precisely. Current models suggest that the matter density in the outer regions of the Solar System was too low to account for the formation of such large bodies from the traditionally accepted method of core accretion, and various hypotheses have been advanced to explain their evolution. One is that the ice giants were not created by core accretion but from instabilities within the original protoplanetary disc, and later had their atmospheres blasted away by radiation from a nearby massive OB star.[95] An alternative concept is that they formed closer to the Sun, where the matter density was higher, and then subsequently migrated to their current orbits.[96]
The migration hypothesis is favoured for its ability to explain current orbital resonances in the Kuiper belt, particularly the 2/5 resonance. As Neptune migrated outward, it collided with the objects in the proto-Kuiper belt, creating new resonances and sending other orbits into chaos. The objects in the scattered disc are believed to have been placed in their current positions by interactions with the resonances created by Neptune's migration.[97] A 2004 computer model by Alessandro Morbidelli of the Observatoire de la Côte d'Azur in Nice, suggested that the migration of Neptune into the Kuiper belt may have been triggered by the formation of a 1/2 resonance in the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn, which created a gravitational push that propelled both Uranus and Neptune into higher orbits and caused them to switch places. The resultant expulsion of objects from the proto-Kuiper belt could also explain the Late Heavy Bombardment 600 million years after the Solar System's formation and the appearance of Jupiter's Trojan asteroids.[98]
Neptune has 13 known moons.[5] The largest by far, comprising more than 99.5 percent of the mass in orbit around Neptune[99] and the only one massive enough to be spheroidal, is Triton, discovered by William Lassell just 17 days after the discovery of Neptune itself. Unlike all other large planetary moons in the Solar System, Triton has a retrograde orbit, indicating that it was captured rather than forming in place, and probably was once a dwarf planet in the Kuiper belt.[100] It is close enough to Neptune to be locked into a synchronous orbit, and is slowly spiraling inward and eventually will be torn apart when it reaches the Roche limit.[101] In 1989, Triton was the coldest object that had yet been measured in the solar system,[102] with estimated temperatures of −235 °C (38 K).[103]
Neptune's second known satellite (by order of discovery), the irregular moon Nereid, has one of the most eccentric orbits of any satellite in the solar system. The eccentricity of 0.7512 gives it an apoapsis that is seven times its periapsis distance from Neptune.[104]
From July to September 1989, Voyager 2 discovered six new Neptunian moons.[51] Of these, the irregularly shaped Proteus is notable for being as large as a body of its density can be without being pulled into a spherical shape by its own gravity.[105] Although the second most massive Neptunian moon, it is only one quarter of one percent of the mass of Triton. Neptune's innermost four moons, Naiad, Thalassa, Despina, and Galatea, orbit close enough to be within Neptune's rings. The next farthest out, Larissa was originally discovered in 1981 when it had occulted a star. This had been attributed to ring arcs, but when Voyager 2 observed Neptune in 1989, it was found to have been caused by the moon. Five new irregular moons discovered between 2002 and 2003 were announced in 2004.[106][107] As Neptune was the Roman god of the sea, the planet's moons have been named after lesser sea gods.[31]
Neptune is never visible to the naked eye, having a brightness between magnitudes +7.7 and +8.0,[8][5] which can be outshone by Jupiter's Galilean moons, the dwarf planet Ceres and the asteroids 4 Vesta, 2 Pallas, 7 Iris, 3 Juno and 6 Hebe.[108] A telescope or strong binoculars will resolve Neptune as a small blue disk, similar in appearance to Uranus.[109]
Because of the distance of Neptune from the Earth, the angular diameter of the planet only ranges from 2.2–2.4 arcseconds;[5][8] the smallest of the Solar System planets. Its small apparent size has made it challenging to study visually; most telescopic data was fairly limited until the advent of Hubble Space Telescope and large ground-based telescopes with adaptive optics.[110][111]
From the Earth, Neptune goes through apparent retrograde motion every 367 days, resulting in a looping motion against the background stars during each opposition. These loops will carry it close to the 1846 discovery coordinates in April and July 2010 and in October and November 2011.[85]
Observation of Neptune in the radio frequency band shows that the planet is a source of both continuous emission and irregular bursts. Both sources are believed to originate from the planet's rotating magnetic field.[45] In the infrared part of the spectrum, Neptune's storms appear bright against the cooler background, allowing the size and shape of these features to be readily tracked.[112]
Voyager 2's closest approach to Neptune occurred on August 25, 1989. Since this was the last major planet the spacecraft could visit, it was decided to make a close flyby of the moon Triton, regardless of the consequences to the trajectory, similarly to what was done for Voyager 1's encounter with Saturn and its moon Titan. The images relayed back to Earth from Voyager 2 became the basis of a 1989 PBS all-night program called Neptune All Night.[113]
During the encounter, signals from the spacecraft required 246 minutes to reach the Earth. Hence, for the most part, the Voyager 2 mission relied on pre-loaded commands for the Neptune encounter. The spacecraft performed a near-encounter with the moon Neried before it came within 4,400 km of Neptune's atmosphere on August 25, then passed close to the planet's largest moon Triton later the same day.[114]
The spacecraft verified the existence of a magnetic field about the planet, and discovered that the field was offset from the center and tilted in a manner similar to the field around Uranus. The question of the planet's rotation period was settled using measurements of radio emissions. Voyager 2 also showed the Neptune had a surprisingly active weather system. Six new moons were discovered, and the planet was shown to have more than one ring.[114][51]
In 2003, there was a proposal to NASA's "Vision Missions Studies" to implement a "Neptune Orbiter with Probes" mission that does Cassini-level science without fission-based electric power or propulsion. The work is being done in conjunction with JPL and the California Institute of Technology.[115]
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