Neptune

$£ . NEPTUNE mm*-. m m W) SEYMOUR SIMON -.>- MORROW JUNIOR BOOKS New York ) PHOTO AND ART CREDITS All photographs courtesy of Jet Propulsion Laboratory/NASA. Artwork on pages 8, 9, and 10 by Ann Neumann. The 1TC Garamond Book. text type is 18 Copyright © 1991 by Seymour Simon All rights reserved. reproduced or pt. ^ No part of this book may be utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher. Inquiries should be addressed to William Morrow and Company. Inc., 105 Madison Avenue, New York, NY Printed in Singapore at 10016. Tien Wah 123456789 Press. 10 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Simon, Seymour. Neptune Seymour Simon cm. p. Summary: Discusses the physical features and moons of the planet Neptune and how we have gained our knowledge of this giant world ISBN 0-688-09631-X ( trade ).— ISBN 0-688-09632-8 ( library 1. Neptune ( Planet 1. Neptune ( Planet )—Juvenile literature. )) [ I. O^Kb u, Title. QB691.S56 1991 523.4'81—dc20 90-13213 CIP AC Too the Voyager scientists, engineers, and technicians who provided us with these wonderful photographs of Neptune Neptune cannot be seen from Earth by the unaided eye. Even when viewed through a telescope, it looks like a tiny blue dot as distant as the stars. In fact, Galileo Neptune through his small telescope almost four dred years ago, but mistook first identified as a planet in it for a 1846 at star. Roman god of the sea. hun- Neptune was the Berlin Observa- tory in Germany. Later, the planet was after the saw named Neptune 1 Neptune the eighth planet in the Solar System and is takes 165 years to orbit the sun. Pluto is the ninth planet and takes almost 250 years to circle the sun. But Pluto has an odd Neptune orbit that brings for 20 out of every 250 and 1999, Neptune Neptune closer to the sun than it is is years. So between 1979 the outermost of the planets. about 2.8 billion miles from the sun, thirty times farther away than planet Earth. Like Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus, Neptune gases. Neptune is just a bit smaller is a giant planet made up mostly of about thirty thousand miles across, than Uranus. about forty-two Earths could fit If Neptune were hollow, inside. T,he Voyager 2 spacecraft, seen in the painting on the right, was launched from Earth on August planets: Jupiter It a remarkable tour of the outer was the beginning of planets. Voyager 20, 1977. 2 was supposed to visit only two and Saturn. But back on Earth, space engineers figured out a and more than 2.8