II.

Observation from Earth and Space

Neptune was the second major planet, after Uranus, to be detected using a telescope. Mathematical theories of astronomical orbits led to the discovery of Neptune. To account for wobbles in the orbit of the planet Uranus, British astronomer John Couch Adams and French astronomer Urbain Jean Joseph Leverrier independently calculated the existence and position of a new planet in 1845 and 1846, respectively. They theorized that the gravitational attraction of this planet for Uranus was causing the wobbles in Uranus’s orbit. Using information from Leverrier, German astronomer Johann Gottfried Galle first observed the planet by telescope in 1846.

After its discovery, Leverrier proposed that the new planet be named after the sea god Neptune from Greek and Roman mythology. The appropriateness of this name was confirmed in the 20th century when astronomers learned about Neptune’s watery interior.

Neptune is barely visible to the naked eye and is so faint that even through binoculars it appears as a dim star. Through a large telescope, the planet appears from Earth as a small greenish disk with a diameter of about 2.3 arc seconds. Astronomers use the unit arc second to describe the size of objects in the night sky. Arc seconds give the angle an object blocks out in the sky (a quarter held at arm’s length is approximately 7,000 arc seconds).

Because Neptune is so far from Earth (about 4.49 billion km or 2.79 billion mi), only one spacecraft has visited the planet. During a rare alignment of the four giant planets, the spacecraft Voyager 2, launched on August 20, 1977, was able to pass by Jupiter (in 1979), Saturn (in 1981), Uranus (in 1986), and Neptune (in 1989). Scientists launched Voyager 2 with just enough energy to pass Jupiter. However, the strong gravitational pull of Jupiter accelerated the spacecraft as it passed by the planet so that Voyager 2 had enough energy to reach Saturn. As Voyager 2 successively passed each of the four giant planets, the gravitational pull of the planet accelerated the spacecraft enough to help it reach the next planet, until it reached Neptune more than ten years after its launch.

As Voyager 2 passed by Neptune, it recorded and transmitted images of the planet, its rings, and its moons. Astronomers studying these images discovered four rings and five previously undiscovered moons. Four of these newly discovered moons are the innermost moons of Neptune, the largest of which measures only 180 km (112 mi) in diameter—small enough to fit in a large crater of Earth’s Moon.