Neptune -- Furthest Planet from the Sun Quiz

Answer: Blue

The outer layers of Neptune's atmosphere are formed by clouds of methane ice. Methane absorbs red light, thus accounting for the planet's blue appearance.

Answer: Hydrogen

Neptune has an atmosphere with a scale height of close to 20km. Its primary component is hydrogen, accounting for between 77-83% of the atmosphere. The second biggest component is helium (16-22%). Methane is the third largest component (1-2%). There are also traces of hydrogen deuteride and ethane.

Answer: 30 AU

Given that it is 1 AU from the Sun to Earth, going outwards it is just less than 1.5 AU from the Sun to Mars, and 5 AU from the Sun to Jupiter. The distances then start to become really large: from the Sun to Saturn varies from 9-10 AU and from the Sun to Uranus from 18-20 AU.

It is 30 AU from the Sun to Neptune. To give you a sense of perspective, imagine that the distance from the Sun to Neptune is a 100-yard football field. The Sun is a little smaller than a golf ball on this scale at one end of the field, and Neptune, about a tenth of that size on the other goal line.

The Earth, which would be smaller than a flea, is located between he 1-yard and 2-yard line at the Sun's end of the field. Suffice it to say that it is a long, long way to Neptune!

Answer: Triton

Triton is enormous compared to all of the other moons of Neptune. With a radius of 1,530 km, it is about 80% of the size of our Moon (1,737 km). By comparison, the second-largest of Neptune's moons, Proteus, has a radius of jut 210 km. Triton accounts for 99.5% of the total mass of all 13 of Neptune's moons.
Triton is the seventh-largest satellite in the Solar System, although it is almost exactly half the size of the largest, Jupiter's Ganymede, which has a radius of 2,634 km. Triton is the only large moon in the Solar System with a retrograde orbit -- i.e. it orbits in a direction opposite to its planet's rotation.
When measured in 1989, Triton was found to be the coldest known place in the Solar System with estimated temperature of -235 C.
Of the alternatives, Callisto is the second-largest of Jupiter's moons, Titania is the largest moon of Uranus, and Proteus is Neptune's second-largest moon.

Answer: Sea gods

Since Neptune is the Roman God of the sea, its moons are named after lesser sea-related Gods. Its largest moon, Triton, is named after the Greek sea god who was the son of Poseidon.
Of the alternatives, the moons of Jupiter that were discovered before 2004 are named after lovers and favorites of Zeus. Those discovered after 2004 are named after the daughters of either Jupiter or Zeus. The moons of Uranus are named after the characters of William Shakespeare and Alexander Pope.

Answer: 15 times

The earth has a surface area of about 510,000,000 square km. Neptune's surface area is about 7,618,300,000 sq km: about 15 times the size of Earth. To put this figure into context, Earth is the equivalent to the size of Canada if Neptune is the size of all the land on Earth. In the equivalent comparison using the entire surface of the Earth (70% of which is covered with water) inflated to the size of Neptune, Earth would then be about twice the size of Russia.

Answer: 1846

Neptune was first seen by Galileo in 1612, but he mistook it for a star. In 1821, French astronomer Alexis Bouvard was studying the orbit of Uranus and he hypothesized the existence of an eighth planet in the solar system. This was confirmed 25 years later by three astronomers, Frenchman Urbain Le Verrier, Germany's Johann Gottfried Galle and England's John Couch Adams.

The official date of discovery of Neptune is September 23, 1846. It remained the furthest planet from the Sun until Pluto was discovered in 1930, and then regained that status in 2006 when Pluto was reclassified as a 'dwarf planet'.

Answer: 165

In 2011, Neptune completed its first complete orbit of the Sun since its discovery in 1846. It takes Neptune 60,190 Earth days (164.79 years) to make a single complete revolution of the Sun. I doubt anyone on Neptune complains about how quickly Christmas comes around!
The alternatives are the approximate orbit times of other bodies in the Solar System -- Jupiter takes roughly 12 Earth years (11.86 exactly) to orbit the Sun, Uranus orbits every 84 Earth years (84.32), and Pluto takes almost exactly 264 Earth years.

Answer: Voyager 2

By the time Voyager 2 reached Neptune, it took just over four hours for a signal to travel from the spacecraft back to Earth. It passed within 4,400 km of Neptune's atmosphere before passing close to Triton later the same day. Six new moons were discovered and Neptune was shown to have more than one ring and a seriously active weather system.
Voyager 1 had earlier performed a similar fly-by of Saturn. The New Horizons probe was scheduled to fly close to Pluto in 2015.

Answer: The Mystic

The last of the seven movements in Holst's "The Planets" suite is "Neptune, the Mystic". Uranus is "The Magician", Saturn the "Bringer of Old Age" and Venus the "Bringer of Peace".