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In the 1990s, it was determined that Uranus and Neptune were a distinct class of giant planet, separate from the other giant planets, Jupiter and Saturn, which are gas giants predominantly composed of hydrogen and helium. [1] Neptune and Uranus are now referred to as ice giants. Lacking well-defined solid surfaces, they are primarily composed ...
The IAU's names for exoplanets – and on most occasions their host stars – are chosen by the Executive Committee Working Group (ECWG) on Public Naming of Planets and Planetary Satellites, a group working parallel with the Working Group on Star Names (WGSN). [1] Proper names of stars chosen by the ECWG are explicitly recognised by the WGSN. [1]
Although there are many icy objects in the Solar System, none of them qualify as planets under the IAU definition of planet.However, most planetary-mass moons are ice-rock (e.g. Ganymede, Callisto, Enceladus, Titan, and Triton) or even primarily ice (e.g. Mimas, Tethys, Dione, Rhea, and Iapetus) and so qualify as ice planets under geophysical definitions of the term.
It is a gaseous cyan-coloured ice giant. Most of the planet is made of water, ammonia, and methane in a supercritical phase of matter, which astronomy calls "ice" or volatiles. The planet's atmosphere has a complex layered cloud structure and has the lowest minimum temperature (49 K (−224 °C; −371 °F)) of all the Solar System's
Neptune, like Uranus, is an ice giant, a subclass of giant planet, because they are smaller and have higher concentrations of volatiles than Jupiter and Saturn. [73] In the search for exoplanets , Neptune has been used as a metonym : discovered bodies of similar mass are often referred to as "Neptunes", [ 74 ] just as scientists refer to ...
Giant planet: A massive planet. They are most commonly composed primarily of 'gas' (hydrogen and helium) or 'ices' (volatiles such as water, methane, and ammonia), but may also be composed primarily of rock, which would make one a Mega Earth. [1] Regardless of their bulk compositions, giant planets normally have thick atmospheres of hydrogen ...
The sizes are listed in units of Jupiter radii (R J, 71 492 km).This list is designed to include all planets that are larger than 1.6 times the size of Jupiter.Some well-known planets that are smaller than 1.6 R J (17.93 R 🜨 or 114 387.2 km) have been included for the sake of comparison.
Giant planets are sometimes known as gas giants, but many astronomers now apply the term only to Jupiter and Saturn, classifying Uranus and Neptune, which have different compositions, as ice giants. Both names are potentially misleading; the Solar System's giant planets all consist primarily of fluids above their critical points, where distinct ...