Neptune is back where we first saw it
FROM TODAY'S PRINT EDITIONS:
A milestone today for the planet Neptune: Guy Ottewell’s Astronomical Calendar says the eighth planet from the sun was first detected in 1844 by the French astronomer Urbain Leverrier. He calculated its likely position based on irregularities in the motion of the seventh planet, Uranus, discovered in 1781.
Neptune was finally seen in a telescope on Sept. 23, 1846, right where Leverrier said it should be. Today, Neptune completes its first complete orbit of the sun since that night.
(NASA PHOTO)
Posted by Frank Roylance at 12:01 AM | Permalink
| Comments (1)
Categories: From the Sun's print edition, Sky Notes
Categories: From the Sun's print edition, Sky Notes
Comments
This is astounding in two ways; first, that Leverrier's calculations were so accurate, second that it takes a century and a half for this planet to make one orbit around the sun! We hear so much about the size of galaxies and the universe that we forget about the sheer vastness of our own solar system.
Posted by: Larry Esser | July 12, 2011 7:08 PM