Did you know that it is 30 times farther from the Sun than the Earth?
Dark, cold and battered by supersonic winds, the ice giant Neptune is the eighth and most distant planet in our solar system. More than 30 times farther from the Sun than Earth, Neptune was the first planet predicted by mathematics before its discovery. In 2011, Neptune completed its first 165-year orbit since its discovery in 1846.
It is the smallest of the gas giants: With an equatorial radius of only 24,764 km, Neptune is smaller than all the other gas giants in the solar system: Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus. But here's the funny thing: Neptune is actually more massive than Uranus by about 18%. Since it is smaller but more massive, Neptune has a much higher density than Uranus. In fact, at 1,638 g / cm3, Neptune is the densest gas giant in our entire solar system.
Neptune's cloud layer has an especially vivid blue tint , due in part to the result of absorption of red light by methane on the planets, primarily in the hydrogen and helium atmosphere. That is, methane clouds absorb red wavelengths, but reflect mainly bluish light.
Comparative data with Earth:
Diameter : 3,883 Earths (about 4 times larger than Earth)
Average distance from the sun: 30.06 times that of the Earth (4,500 million kilometers)
Mass: 17.14 times that of Earth
Density : 0.31 times that of Earth
