![]() Having visited Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus, it headed towards Neptune. This space probe was launched in 1977 to study outer planets. Only one spacecraft, Voyager 2, has visited Neptune. NASA's New Horizons spacecraft passed through Neptune's orbit on its way to Pluto after eight years of travel. The only spacecraft to visit Neptune, Voyager 2, took a dozen years to reach the ice giant. The length of a trip to a planet depends on the planet's position and the spacecraft's route and speed. Because of its extreme distance from our planet, Neptune became the last planet of the Solar System to be discovered. At its farthest, Neptune lies 4.7 billion (2.9 billion miles) km away from the Earth. When the planets are closest to each other, they lie at a distance of 4.3 billion km (2.7 billion miles). How far is Neptune from Earth?Īs Neptune and the Earth move through space, the distance between them is constantly shifting. The last time this switch happened was in 1979 and lasted until 1999. However, sometimes the planet gets even farther than Pluto, whose highly eccentric orbit brings it inside Neptune's orbit for 20 years every 248 Earth years. Neptune lies at an average distance of 30 astronomical units or 4.5 billion km (2.8 billion miles) away from the Sun. Sometimes the ice giant is even farther from our star than the dwarf planet Pluto! How far is Neptune from the Sun? How far is Neptune?Īs we've already mentioned above, Neptune is the farthest planet from the Sun. Neptune's equatorial zone takes about 18 hours to spin once, while the polar regions take about 12 hours to complete a rotation. However, as the ice giant isn't a single solid object, its different parts rotate at different speeds. Neptune rotates faster than the Earth: one average Neptunian day lasts about 16 Earth hours. As the axial tilt of Neptune is similar to those of Mars and our planet, the ice giant has seasons just like we experience on the Earth each season lasts for about 40 years. Neptune takes about 165 Earth years to complete one orbit around the Sun. But unlike a Neptunian year, a day on Neptune is relatively short. This distance creates the longest orbit of the eight planets. Neptune is the eighth and farthest planet from the Sun. Neptune's volume is about 57 times the volume of our planet: 57 Earths could fit inside the ice giant! Neptune's orbit and rotation Also, being the Solar System's third most massive planet, Neptune is more than seventeen times as massive as the Earth. If the Earth were the size of a coin, the ice giant would be as big as a baseball. Neptune's radius is about four times that of our planet. Its surface area covers 7.6 billion km^2 (2.9 billion mi^2), while to take a trip around the equator of the blue planet, you would have to cover a distance of 154,705 km (96,129 miles). With a radius of 24,622 km (15,299.4 miles), Neptune is the fourth-largest planet in the Solar System and the smallest of gas giants. Fortunately, the scientific data allow us to imagine the size of this remote planet. How big is Neptune?Īs the outermost planet from the Sun in our Solar System, Neptune has a very small apparent size and is challenging to observe from the Earth. Le Verrier communicated his findings to the German astronomer Johann Gottfried Galle, who identified Neptune in the Berlin Observatory on September 23, 1846, increasing the number of known planets to eight. Around the same time, the French astronomer Urbain Le Verrier calculated the planet's location independently of Adams. In 1846, John Couch Adams, a British mathematician and astronomer, determined the position of Neptune, using only mathematics. One of the earliest recorded observations of the ice giant was made by Galileo Galilei, who spotted the planet with his primitive telescope in 1612-1613 however, the astronomer seems to have mistaken Neptune for a star. Neptune was the first planet discovered through mathematical calculations. Average distance from the Earth: 4.5 billion km (2.8 billion miles).Perihelion: 4.459 billion km (2.771 billion miles). ![]() Aphelion: 4.536 billion km (2.819 billion miles).September 1: Lunar occultation of Neptune.June 30: Neptune enters retrograde motion.How long does it take to get to Neptune?.In this article, we'll tell you more interesting details and curious facts about Neptune. This distant blue planet has faint rings, numerous moons, and no solid surface. ![]() Neptune is known as the eighth and farthest planet from the Sun, which can't be seen with the naked eye from the Earth.
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