We probably all know that Neptune is the 8th planet, but did you know that winds on Neptune can reach up to 600 miles per hour? Or that Neptune is 3 billion miles from the sun! Do you even know who discovered Neptune? Well lets go back to when John Crouch Adams was alive (1814-1892) and find out.
On September 23, 1846 Neptune was discovered by John Crouch Adams. He tried to tell people about his discovery, but nobody would listen. The strange planet went unnoticed. Only a couple of months later, Urbain Lexerrier noticed a bluish object in the sky. He looked on the star chart and noticed that the bluish object was not marked.
Urbain Lexerrier turned to Johann Galle for help which led to the second discovery of Neptune. After that discovery people didn't know who to give the credit to. The people who didn't know about Adams gave the credit to Lexerrier, and the people who didn't listen to Adams before, apologized, and gave the credit to him. After hearing both sides of the story People decided that Adams and Lexerrier should be called the discoverers of Neptune.
In 1977, years after the discovery of Neptune, the United States scientists launched Voyager II to explore the secrets of Neptune. Voyager II revealed that Neptune is actually a gaseous planet with a core of rock covered in ice. As a good bye present to Earth, the last thing Voyager II discovered about Neptune was that it had 4 rings and 8 moons. The names of the moons were Naiad, Thalassa, Despina, Galatea, Larissa, Proteus, Neried, and Triton.
On all planets the moons usually travel in one direction, but Neptune is different. Triton travels in an opposite direction than all of the other moons. Scientists learned that Triton once was a planet that got caught in Neptune's gravity.
For more information visit the following sites:
http://www.windows.ucar.edu/tour/link=/neptune/neptune.html
