Question

How many rings does Neptune have? How and when were they discovered?

Answer 1

Hint: Our solar system is made up of various objects including eight planets namely Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune alongside dwarf planets (Pluto and Eris) and moons, minor planets, comets, etc. Neptune is the eighth planet in the solar system and located at the farthest distance from the sun. It is the densest giant planet although it is physically smaller and only the fourth-largest planet by diameter. It is seventeen times the mass of the earth. The name Neptune has been given after the Roman god of the sea.

Complete answer: Neptune has five principal rings around it and they were first discovered in 1984 by a team of scientists at the La Silla Observatory in Chile. The rings were named Galle, Le Verrier, Lassell, Arago and Adams in order of increasing distance from the planet. Out of these, the Galle and Lassell rings are about 2000-5000 km wide while the other three are only about 100 km wide. The rings of Neptune are similar to the rings of Jupiter as they are composed of micrometre-sized dust. Four of Neptune’s moons (Galatea, Naiad, Thalassa and Despina) have their orbits between the rings. The rings were first photographed in 1989 by Nasa’s Voyager 2 spacecraft.

Note: The earliest sightings of Neptune date back to 1612 made by Galileo, however, the planet was discovered in 1846 by German astronomer Johann Galle based on positions predicted by French astronomer Urbain Le Verrier in the same year. Neptune’s core is made up of methane, ammonia and water forming a hot dense fluid in its mantle. The atmosphere of Neptune at higher altitude is made up of hydrogen and helium.