Neptune has the wildest and strangest weather in the entire Solar System. It has huge storms with extremely high winds. Its atmosphere has dark spots which come and go, and bright cirrus-like clouds which change rapidly. Neptune has an average temperature of -353 Fahrenheit (-214 Celsius).
Length of a year
On Earth sunlight drives our weather, but Neptune is so far away that it receives a thousand times less sunlight than Earth does.
about 165 Earth years
Orbit and RotationAnd Neptune makes a complete orbit around the Sun (a year in Neptunian time) in about 165 Earth years (60,190 Earth days). Sometimes Neptune is even farther from the Sun than dwarf planet Pluto.
Length of a day
One day on Neptune takes about 16 hours (the time it takes for Neptune to rotate or spin once). And Neptune makes a complete orbit around the Sun (a year in Neptunian time) in about 165 Earth years (60,190 Earth days).
Seasons
This means that Neptune experiences seasons just like we do on Earth; however, since its year is so long, each of the four seasons lasts for over 40 years.Neptune has 14 known moons.
Moons
Neptune’s largest moon Triton was discovered on October 10, 1846, by William Lassell, just 17 days after Johann Gottfried Galle discovered the planet. Since Neptune was named for the Roman god of the sea, its moons are named for various lesser sea gods and nymphs in Greek mythology.
Triton is the only large moon in the solar system that circles its planet in a direction opposite to the planet’s rotation (a retrograde orbit), which suggests that it may once have been an independent object that Neptune captured. Triton is extremely cold, with surface temperatures around minus 391 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 235 degrees Celsius). And yet, despite this deep freeze at Triton, Voyager 2 discovered geysers spewing icy material upward more than 5 miles (8 kilometers). Triton’s thin atmosphere, also discovered by Voyager, has been detected from Earth several times since, and is growing warmer, but scientists do not yet know why.
