John Couch Adams - John Gottfried Galle - B A Smith - The Universe TV - Michio Kaku - Solar Empire TV - Michelle Thaller - Storyville: Farthest: Voyager’s Interstellar Journey TV - Brian Cox TV -
Formed a design at the beginning of this week of investigating, as soon as possible after taking my degree, the irregularities in the motion of Uranus which are yet unaccounted for; in order to find whether they may be attributed to the action of an undiscovered planet beyond it; and if possible, thence to determine the elements of its orbit, etc., approximately which would probably lead to its discovery [Neptune]. John Couch Adams, Journal of Society of Engineers 1893
Sir,— The Planet [Neptune] whose position you marked out actually exists. On the day on which your letter reached me, I found a star of the eighth magnitude, which was not recorded in the excellent map designed by Dr Bremiker, containing the twenty-first hour of the collection published by the Royal Academy of Berlin. The observation of the succeeding day showed it to be the Planet of which we were in quest. Johann Gottfried Galle, cited Nichol’s ‘The Planet Neptune’
Neptune’s atmosphere is revealed by Voyager II images to contain clouds of methane ice above a lower deck of hydrogen sulfide or ammonia ices, and to be dominated by an anticyclonic storm system designated the ‘Great Dark Spot’; this bears both similarities and differences to the Great Red Spot of Jupiter. Like the rings of Uranus, those of Neptune are composed of very dark, but in addition very dusty, material. Six new regular satellites have been discovered whose radii range from 25 to 200 km. Triton is noted to be a differentiated body showing evidence of early surface-melting episodes. At least two active plumes are found on Triton, which may be driven by solar heating. B A Smith et al, Voyager II at Neptune: Imaging Result
In the distant corners of our Solar System are the violent ice giants Uranus and Neptune. Blanketed with smoky hazes these outer planets are turbulent and unpredictable. Neptune suffers the fastest winds in our solar system ... Uranus’s inner swarm of moons dash around the planet in less than a day. The Universe s1e11: The Outer Planets
Neptune had a great dark spot in its southern hemisphere. ibid.
Scientists were in for another surprise: the largest storm on the planet – the dark spot – simply vanished from the atmosphere. ibid.
Neptune has a complex system of moons – thirteen have been discovered so far. ibid.
Neptune’s largest moon Triton is roughly the size of Earth’s moon; it is the coldest object in our solar system ever observed by astronomers. ibid.
Last of the gas giants was Neptune, a giant blue sphere 2.8 billion miles from Earth. It was August 1989 – Voyager had taken 12 years to reach here. It’s so far out that it takes Neptune 165 years to orbit the Sun. The Universe: The Planets
Up until 1989 Neptune was considered comparatively dull. Sitting far away from the sun, and having an orbit of 165 years, scientists didn’t believe there was much to be discovered on the blue planet. But a visit from Voyager II changed all that. The Universe: Wildest Weather in the Cosmos
Scientists were shocked to discover traces of clouds. Most surprising these clouds were travelling around Neptune at ferocious speeds. ibid.
Neptune has the fastest winds in the solar system. But it also has a great dark spot. A mysterious hurricane-like storm that appears and disappears with no warning. It flies around the planet anti-clockwise. ibid.
Neptune is the windiest planet in the solar system. Winds blow on the surface of Neptune over a thousand miles per hour. Professor Michio Kaku
Neptune has the fastest winds in the solar system blowing at up to a thousand miles per hour. Five years after Voyager, Hubble went looking for these tornadoes. Solar Empire: A Star is Born, Discovery 1997
Neptune: predicted before actually being seen by a German telescope in 1846. On the last leg of its odyssey Voyager flew past the Neptune system. The date was August 24th 1989. Voyager confirmed the existence of yet another ring system ... The craft came within just three thousand miles of the cloud tops, its closest planetary encounter. Solar Empire: Edge of Darkness
It was large and active with colourful weather systems and winds raging at over a thousand miles an hour. ibid.
There’s actually a giant storm on Neptune called the Great Dark Spot. It’s a big storm about the size of the Earth and it’s persisted for many years. The winds amazingly get up to 1,100 miles per hour. Michelle Thaller
In the summer of 1989, 12 years after leaving Earth, Voyager II finally approached Neptune, almost 3 billion miles away. Storyville: The Farthest: Voyager’s Interstellar Journey, BBC 2018
Voyager passed a mere 3,000 miles above Neptune’s north pole, arriving with split-second accuracy … ‘The southern hemisphere of Triton is entirely covered with nitrogen ice.’ ibid.
Far far away beyond Mars, past the storms of Jupiter and the rings of Saturn, conditions become very different. Temperatures plummet and distances between worlds are measured not in millions but in billions of kilometres. Here lies the most mysterious planets of them all. Uranus: a pale blue marble hanging in the dark frozen depths of space. And further out, the solar systems final true planet: Neptune. Beyond, we thought we’d only ever find tiny lifeless worlds frozen to the core. How wrong we were. Brian Cox, The Planets V: Into the Darkness: Ice Worlds, BBC 2019
Neptune: 4.5 kilometres from the sun … Neptune’s atmosphere is bursting with activity. What we found was a planet of extreme weather where high altitude winds whip white methane clouds around of over 2,000 km per hour. ibid.