Space Report

my reports on neptune and comets

Neptune: 

Neptune is one out of two planets you cannot see without a telescope. And the other is Pluto which means it’s pretty far from the sun. In fact it’s the only planet farther from the sun than Pluto. Neptune is usually the 2^nd farthest planet from the sun. It’s 30 times farther from the sun than the earth is.

Every 248 years Pluto falls into the orbit of Neptune for almost 20 years! During that time Pluto is closer to the sun than Neptune is and Neptune is considered the farthest planet from the sun. The last time this happened was from January 23^rd 1979 to February 11^th 1999. And on average Neptune is 2,793,100,000 miles away from the sun.

Neptune is 30,775 miles in diameter, which is almost 4 times the Earth’s diameter! Neptune has many moons but its main ones are Triton and Nereid. Triton is its biggest moon. It is 17 times as large as the earth in mass and is the 3^rd largest planet. Neptune has a large spot on it where there are heavy wind storms. Those winds are worse than the winds storms on earth.

The planet Neptune is blue because of methane gases in its atmosphere. It has several rings; it’s made of hydrogen, helium, water and silicates. Neptune’s largest ring is 39000 miles from the planet. The winds on Neptune blow its clouds up to 700 miles per hour!

Neptune goes around the sun once every 165 Earth years, meaning its revolution or year is 165 times as long as the Earths revolution. Neptune’s day is only 16 hours and 7 minutes on earth. Meaning its rotation is a lot faster than earths and it spins faster.

The location of Neptune was discovered in 1846 by John Couch Adams. The Voyager 2 visited Neptune in 1989. It took 12 years for the Voyager 2 just to reach it! It briefly passed Neptune and took many pictures on its journey. Neptune only gets 1/900^th of the solar power the earth does. Neptune has a rocky core and is considered a gas giant by many people but isn’t really made up of mostly gas like Uranus, Jupiter and Saturn.

Comets

Comets have two tails, a dust tail and a gas tail. The tails face outside of the sun in their orbit. When a comet gets close enough to the sun the ice melts and releases dust and gas. That is what actually makes the tails though and another part of the comet called the coma.

The name COMET means “long haired star” in the Greek language. The meaning refers to the comets extremely long tails. The tails can be up to as long as 100 million kilometers! That’s longer than it would take to get from California to Maine. The tails are very thinly stretche3d and so there isn’t much mass in them.

Comets orbit the sun in an oval shape. It takes 200 years or less for a short period comet to fully orbit but it usually takes over 200 years for a long period comets. Comets are usually found in two places. These places are the Kuiper belt and the Oort Cloud.

Comets are made of ice dust, gas, and small rocky particles. A comets head is the brightest part of a comet. A dozen comets can be detected in the sky at one time but most are extremely hard to see. And most you have to use a telescope to see. It’s usually unpredictable when there will be a bright comet that you can see with the naked eye.

Usually, comets are about the size of a mountain. When the ice turns into gas and dust it not only creates the tail but also the outer layer of the comet’s head called the coma. There’s one very famous comet called Halley’s Comet. We this Halley’s Comet about every 76 years.

Halley’s Comet last appeared to us in 1986 but it was too far away from the earth to be seen without a telescope.  Before the early 18^th century people thought that Halley’s Comet was a different comet each time it came around. Edmond Halley discovered the fact that every time it was seen it was the same comet. Halley’s Comet’s next appearance will be in 2061 and will also be too far away from earth to be seen very well.

Works Cited 

Smith, Bradford A. "World Book at Nasa: Neptune." NASA.gov. N.A.S.A., n.p. Web. 19 Jan. 2010. https://www.nasa.gov/worldbook/neptune_worldbook.html.