Neptune Facts
Neptune is our solar system's eighth planet from the sun. According to NASA, this blue gas giant is more than 17 times the mass of Earth and nearly 58 times the volume of Earth. The rocky core of Neptune is surrounded by a slushy fluid mixture of water, ammonia, and methane ice. Galileo Galilei, an astronomer, was among the first to identify Neptune as a space object, but he mistook it for a star due to its slow movement. According to a synopsis written by researchers at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, around two hundred years later, in 1846, French astronomer Urbain Jean Joseph Le Verrier calculated the approximate location of Neptune by studying gravity-induced disturbances in Uranus' motions.
