Neptune Point New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc White Wine - 6x75cl

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One might be tempted to say "except 'Earth'", which in the English language is the name of a Germanic deity, Erda. The IAU policy is that one may call the Earth and the Moon by any name commonly used in the language being used. Contrary to common use by science fiction writers, 'Terra' and 'Luna' are not the official names of planet Earth and its moon. See the wikipedia article Earth for references. Neptune brightened about 10% between 1980 and 2000 mostly due to the changing of the seasons. [159] Neptune may continue to brighten as it approaches perihelion in 2042. The apparent magnitude currently ranges from 7.67 to 7.89 with a mean of 7.78 and a standard deviation of 0.06. [15] Prior to 1980, the planet was as faint as magnitude 8.0. [15] Neptune is too faint to be visible to the naked eye. It can be outshone by Jupiter's Galilean moons, the dwarf planet Ceres and the asteroids 4 Vesta, 2 Pallas, 7 Iris, 3 Juno, and 6 Hebe. [160] A telescope or strong binoculars will resolve Neptune as a small blue disk, similar in appearance to Uranus. [161] Main articles: Kuiper belt, resonant trans-Neptunian object, and Neptune trojan A diagram showing the major orbital resonances in the Kuiper belt caused by Neptune: the highlighted regions are the 2:3 resonance ( plutinos), the nonresonant "classical belt" (cubewanos), and the 1:2 resonance ( twotinos). The spacecraft verified the existence of a magnetic field surrounding the planet and discovered that the field was offset from the centre and tilted in a manner similar to the field around Uranus. Neptune's rotation period was determined using measurements of radio emissions and Voyager 2 also showed that Neptune had a surprisingly active weather system. Six new moons were discovered, and the planet was shown to have more than one ring. [144] [169] Neptune has such a long journey around the Sun it takes 165 Earth years to go around once. That’s a long year!

From its discovery in 1846 until the discovery of Pluto in 1930, Neptune was the farthest known planet. When Pluto was discovered, it was considered a planet, and Neptune thus became the second-farthest known planet, except for a 20-year period between 1979 and 1999 when Pluto's elliptical orbit brought it closer than Neptune to the Sun, making Neptune the ninth planet from the Sun during this period. [62] [63] The increasingly accurate estimations of Pluto's mass from ten times that of Earth's to far less than that of the Moon [64] and the discovery of the Kuiper belt in 1992 led many astronomers to debate whether Pluto should be considered a planet or as part of the Kuiper belt. [65] [66] In 2006, the International Astronomical Union defined the word "planet" for the first time, reclassifying Pluto as a " dwarf planet" and making Neptune once again the outermost-known planet in the Solar System. [67] Physical characteristics A size comparison of Neptune and Earth For a timeline of discovery dates, see Timeline of discovery of Solar System planets and their moons. An annotated picture of Neptune's many moons as captured by the James Webb Space Telescope. The bright blue diffraction star is Triton, Neptune's largest moon. Because of seasonal changes, the cloud bands in the southern hemisphere of Neptune have been observed to increase in size and albedo. This trend was first seen in 1980. The long orbital period of Neptune results in seasons lasting forty years. [104] StormsThe formation of the ice giants, Neptune and Uranus, has proven difficult to model precisely. Current models suggest that the matter density in the outer regions of the Solar System was too low to account for the formation of such large bodies from the traditionally accepted method of core accretion, and various hypotheses have been advanced to explain their formation. One is that the ice giants were not formed by core accretion but from instabilities within the original protoplanetary disc and later had their atmospheres blasted away by radiation from a nearby massive OB star. [70]

Since 2018, the China National Space Administration has been studying a concept for a pair of Voyager-like interstellar probes tentatively known as Interstellar Express or Interstellar Heliosphere Probe. [172] Both probes will be launched at the same time in 2024 and take differing paths to explore opposing ends of the heliosphere; the second probe, IHP-2, will fly by Neptune in January 2038, passing only 1,000km above the cloud tops, and potentially carry an atmospheric impactor to be released during its approach. [173] Afterward, it will continue on its mission throughout the Kuiper belt toward the tail of the heliosphere, so far unexplored. Measurements by Voyager 2 in extreme-ultraviolet and radio frequencies revealed that Neptune has faint and weak but complex and unique aurorae; however, these observations were limited in time and did not contain infrared. Subsequent astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have not glimpsed the aurorae, in contrast to the more well-defined aurorae of Uranus. [96] [97]Neptune resembles Uranus in its magnetosphere, with a magnetic field strongly tilted relative to its rotational axis at 47° and offset at least 0.55radius, or about 13,500km from the planet's physical centre. Before Voyager 2 's arrival at Neptune, it was hypothesised that Uranus's tilted magnetosphere was the result of its sideways rotation. In comparing the magnetic fields of the two planets, scientists now think the extreme orientation may be characteristic of flows in the planets' interiors. This field may be generated by convective fluid motions in a thin spherical shell of electrically conducting liquids (probably a combination of ammonia, methane and water) [85] resulting in a dynamo action. [92] The average distance between Neptune and the Sun is 4.5 billion km (about 30.1 astronomical units (AU)), and it completes an orbit on average every 164.79years, subject to a variability of around ±0.1years. The perihelion distance is 29.81AU; the aphelion distance is 30.33AU. [g] Internal heating Four images taken a few hours apart with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope 's Wide Field Camera 3. Near infrared radiation data has been used as red channel. [114]