neptune's largest moon is called
[Laughter]
the only thing i really know about
neptune is that it's kind of interesting
from uh from a science point of view in
the way it was discovered in that it was
the first planet that was actually
predicted you know there were what
happened was people looked at the orbit
of uranus which is the one that sort of
inside from neptune in the solar system
and found that the orbit was wasn't
quite what was expected you know the
planet sort of wobbled a bit on its
orbit from time to time and so
the the obvious explanation for this was
that something was causing it to wobble
something else was gravitating was
pulling it and so there were some
calculations done um and that actually
predicted where
neptune should be found on the basis of
the fact that it was clearly distorting
uranus's orbit and indeed when
astronomers went and looked in that
in the place that it had been predicted
it should be found it was actually found
there and so it's the first case where
in looking for planets they kind of used
physics to find the planet it's blue
it's the short thing to say about it and
then it's part of the reason why i think
probably why it ended up being called
neptune is because it has this sort of
sea blue light quality about it um so it
really is very pretty and and it
actually has some clouds on it as well
so it has a little bit of sort of
texture to its surface
obviously you can only you know you only
get to see the outer layers of it but
the outer layers are this beautiful
shade of blue
neptune's largest moon is called triton
and it's an interesting moon in the
solar system because it's the only moon
that actually orbits in the opposite
direction that the planet rotates
usually when the moons form from the
planets they all form from the same spot
of gas so they're kind of spinning and
then the planet forms and so when the
moons form outside of that they're
orbiting around in the same direction
that the planet is spinning triton is
different because neptune is spinning in
one direction but the moon is actually
orbiting around in the opposite
direction
and it has some it has rings as well
another thing about neptune that
actually a lot of planets in the solar
system have rings uranus has a system of
rings neptune has a system of rings
which are a little strange because the
way they were discovered is through a
technique called stellar occultation
that you actually see a star pass behind
the planet and obviously what you're
looking for is the star disappearing
behind the planet to learn about the
atmosphere of the planet but they
discovered that actually the the star
disappeared before it even got to the
planet as it disappeared behind the
rings
and the strange thing was in some of
these occultation experiments they found
that it disappeared on one side but
didn't disappear on the other side which
suggested that the rings were incomplete
there were actually bits of rings on one
side and not on the other side
subsequently when we've actually been
there with these various space probes
and taking a look at it turns out the
rings do go all the way around but
they're actually quite clumpy so there's
places where there's just denser rings
and less dense rings so although you can
trace them all the way around they're
not very smooth in that sense and so
obviously the these occultation
experiments where they disappeared it
was where it was going behind a clumpy
bit of the ring and where it didn't
disappear it was one of the finer bits
where there just wasn't enough material
there to really obscure the stone so
this gives us a hint as to how the moon
was possibly formed it probably wasn't
formed at the same time that that
neptune was formed it was probably some
object in the solar system that was
passing by neptune and neptune actually
gravitationally captured it and so it
got stuck in this orbit in the opposite
direction the the probably the best
known moon of neptune is triton triton
was discovered by an amateur astronomer
from the uk
and most likely because of beer this
amateur astronomer owned a brewery in
the uk and so he made a fortune off of
that and that went to fund his
telescopes so he used one of his
telescopes to look at neptune only 17
days after neptune was actually
discovered and he found this moon triton
the most of the other moons were only
discovered much later and in fact some
of them were only discovered when the
voyager flew by and found some of the
smaller moons