Neptune Point New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc White Wine - 6x75cl

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Neptune's orbit has a profound impact on the region directly beyond it, known as the Kuiper belt. The Kuiper belt is a ring of small icy worlds, similar to the asteroid belt but far larger, extending from Neptune's orbit at 30AU out to about 55AU from the Sun. [125] Much in the same way that Jupiter's gravity dominates the asteroid belt, shaping its structure, so Neptune's gravity dominates the Kuiper belt. Over the age of the Solar System, certain regions of the Kuiper belt became destabilised by Neptune's gravity, creating gaps in its structure. The region between 40 and 42AU is an example. [126]

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 During the encounter, signals from the spacecraft required 246minutes to reach Earth. Hence, for the most part, Voyager 2 's mission relied on preloaded commands for the Neptune encounter. The spacecraft performed a near-encounter with the moon Nereid before it came within 4,400km of Neptune's atmosphere on 25 August, then passed close to the planet's largest moon Triton later the same day. [169]The axial tilt of Neptune is 28.32°, [123] which is similar to the tilts of Earth (23°) and Mars (25°). As a result, Neptune experiences similar seasonal changes to Earth. The long orbital period of Neptune means that the seasons last for forty Earth years. [104] Its sidereal rotation period (day) is roughly 16.11hours. [11] Because its axial tilt is comparable to Earth's, the variation in the length of its day over the course of its long year is not any more extreme. Neptune differs from Uranus in its typical level of meteorological activity. Voyager 2 observed weather phenomena on Neptune during its 1989 flyby, [101] but no comparable phenomena on Uranus during its 1986 fly-by. In 1845–1846, Urbain Le Verrier, independently of Adams, developed his own calculations but aroused no enthusiasm in his compatriots. In June1846, upon seeing LeVerrier's first published estimate of the planet's longitude and its similarity to Adams's estimate, Airy persuaded James Challis to search for the planet. Challis vainly scoured the sky throughout August and September. [35] [38] Challis had, in fact, observed Neptune a year before the planet's subsequent discoverer, Johann Gottfried Galle, and on two occasions, 4 and 12 August 1845. However, his out-of-date star maps and poor observing techniques meant that he failed to recognise the observations as such until he carried out later analysis. Challis was full of remorse but blamed his neglect on his maps and the fact that he was distracted by his concurrent work on comet observations. [39] [35] [40] The outermost ring, Adams, contains five prominent arcs now named Courage, Liberté, Egalité1, Egalité2 and Fraternité (Courage, Liberty, Equality and Fraternity). [155] The existence of arcs was difficult to explain because the laws of motion would predict that arcs would spread out into a uniform ring over short timescales. Astronomers now estimate that the arcs are corralled into their current form by the gravitational effects of Galatea, a moon just inward from the ring. [156] [157] 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's atmosphere is subdivided into two main regions: the lower troposphere, where temperature decreases with altitude, and the stratosphere, where temperature increases with altitude. The boundary between the two, the tropopause, lies at a pressure of 0.1 bars (10kPa). [21] The stratosphere then gives way to the thermosphere at a pressure lower than 10 −5 to 10 −4 bars (1 to 10Pa). [21] The thermosphere gradually transitions to the exosphere.An alternative concept is that they formed closer to the Sun, where the matter density was higher, and then subsequently migrated to their current orbits after the removal of the gaseous protoplanetary disc. [134] This hypothesis of migration after formation is favoured, due to its ability to better explain the occupancy of the populations of small objects observed in the trans-Neptunian region. [135] The current most widely accepted [136] [137] [138] explanation of the details of this hypothesis is known as the Nice model, which explores the effect of a migrating Neptune and the other giant planets on the structure of the Kuiper belt. A second symbol, an ‘LV’ monogram for 'LeVerrier', analogous to the ‘H’ monogram for Uranus. It was never much used outside of France and is now archaic. 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's internal structure resembles that of Uranus. Its atmosphere forms about 5 to 10% of its mass and extends perhaps 10 to 20% of the way towards the core. Pressure in the atmosphere reaches about 10 GPa, or about 100,000 times that of Earth's atmosphere. Increasing concentrations of methane, ammonia and water are found in the lower regions of the atmosphere. [28] Physical and chemical composition of Neptune's interior 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.

Neptune's spectra suggest that its lower stratosphere is hazy due to condensation of products of ultraviolet photolysis of methane, such as ethane and ethyne. [21] [28] The stratosphere is also home to trace amounts of carbon monoxide and hydrogen cyanide. [21] [89] The stratosphere of Neptune is warmer than that of Uranus due to the elevated concentration of hydrocarbons. [21] 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). At high altitudes, Neptune's atmosphere is 80% hydrogen and 19% helium. [28] A trace amount of methane is also present. Prominent absorption bands of methane exist at wavelengths above 600nm, in the red and infrared portion of the spectrum. As with Uranus, this absorption of red light by atmospheric methane is part of what gives Neptune its blue hue, [82] although Neptune's blue differs from Uranus's milder light blue due to concentrated haze in the latter atmosphere. [83] Neptune - cloud cover over three decades (1994-2023) [84] The first of these planetary rings was detected in 1968 by a team led by Edward Guinan. [30] [152] In the early 1980s, analysis of this data along with newer observations led to the hypothesis that this ring might be incomplete. [153]In 1989, the Great Dark Spot, an anticyclonic storm system spanning 13,000km ×6,600km (8,100mi ×4,100mi) [101] was discovered by NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft. The storm resembled the Great Red Spot of Jupiter. Some five years later, on 2 November 1994, the Hubble Space Telescope did not see the Great Dark Spot on the planet. Instead, a new storm similar to the Great Dark Spot was found in Neptune's northern hemisphere. [105] 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] The usual adjectival form is Neptunian. The nonce form Poseidean ( / p ə ˈ s aɪ d i ən/), from Poseidon, has also been used, [4] though the usual adjectival form of Poseidon is Poseidonian ( / ˌ p ɒ s aɪ ˈ d oʊ n i ən/). [61] Status 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]