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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 were named for deities in Greek and Roman mythology. [f] [54] Most languages today use ...
Several symbols were proposed for Neptune to accompany the suggested names for the planet. Claiming the right to name his discovery, Urbain Le Verrier originally proposed to name the planet for the Roman god Neptune [25] and the symbol of a trident, [26] while falsely stating that this had been officially approved by the French Bureau des ...
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 ...
Proper names of planetary systems often follow common themes – for example, the planets of the star Copernicus are named after European astronomers. Proper names for planets outside of the Solar System – known as exoplanets – are chosen by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) through public naming contests known as NameExoWorlds.
The new planet, at first called "Le Verrier" by François Arago, received by consensus the neutral name of Neptune. Its mathematical prediction was a great intellectual feat, but it showed also that Newton's law of gravitation, which Airy had almost called in question, prevailed even at the limits of the Solar System .
List of planet types. From top to bottom: Mercury, Venus without its atmosphere, Earth and the Moon, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune in false colour (not to scale) The following is a list of planet types by their mass, orbit, physical and chemical composition, or by another classification. The IAU defines that a planet in the Solar ...
Neptune's rings are named after astronomers who contributed important work on the planet: [2] Galle, Le Verrier, Lassell, Arago, and Adams. [3][4] Neptune also has a faint unnamed ring coincident with the orbit of the moon Galatea. Three other moons orbit between the rings: Naiad, Thalassa and Despina. [4]
The name of Eris's moon Dysnomia was suggested by its discoverer Michael E. Brown, who also suggested the name of the dwarf planet. The name has two meanings: in mythology Dysnomia (lawlessness) is the daughter of Eris (chaos). However, the name is also an intentional reference to the actor Lucy Lawless who plays the character Xena. The ...