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Neptune's mass of 1.0243 × 10 26 kg [8] is intermediate between Earth and the larger gas giants: it is 17 times that of Earth but just 1/19th that of Jupiter. [g] Its gravity at 1 bar is 11.15 m/s 2, 1.14 times the surface gravity of Earth, [71] and surpassed only by Jupiter. [72] Neptune's equatorial radius of 24,764 km [11] is nearly four ...
An annotated picture of some of Neptune's many moons as captured by the James Webb Space Telescope. The bright blue diffraction star is Triton, Neptune's largest moon; while Hippocamp, its smallest regular moon, is too small to be seen. The planet Neptune has 16 known moons, which are named for minor water deities and a water creature in Greek ...
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.
Triton's retrograde, highly-inclined orbit around Neptune suggests that Triton is likely a captured dwarf planet from the Kuiper belt, being captured by Neptune possibly during an early era of giant planet migration. [4] Upon capture, Triton likely would have had a highly eccentric orbit around Neptune, inducing extreme tidal heating in Triton ...
The last time Neptune's rings were seen in detail was during a flyby in 1989 by NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft as it journeyed beyond the solar system and into interstellar space. That historic flyby ...
In astronomy or planetary science, the frost line, also known as the snow line or ice line, is the minimum distance from the central protostar of a solar nebula where the temperature is low enough for volatile compounds such as water, ammonia, methane, carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide to condense into solid grains, which will allow their accretion into planetesimals.
When Neptune migrates to 28 AU, it has a gravitational encounter with the extra ice giant. Objects captured from the cold belt into the 1:2 mean-motion resonance with Neptune are left behind as a local concentration at 44 AU when this encounter causes Neptune's semi-major axis to jump outward. [83]
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