Mark your calendars, folks: Friday, July 8, 2011. On that day, the most distant planet in our solar system will complete its first full orbit of the sun since it was first knowingly observed by man. That’s right – it was discovered on September 23, 1846 by Heinrich Louis d’Arrest based on the predictions of Urbain Le Verrier. We now know that it orbits the sun once every 164.79 years. By my calculations (which may be off, someone wanna check them for me?), that means Neptune celebrates its first birthday this coming July. Cake will be served.
However, if we want to be VERY exact, we should know at what time the first observation was made, and exactly where, so we can adjust for different time zones which may end up making it a different day to celebrate Chances are in Japan they would mark the event one day “later” than in the U.S.
My lady and I should be just getting back from our honeymoon then.
The outer solar system is continuing to line up for us. (On our second date, we looked at the rings and some planets of Saturn, and ISS Alpha. The stars may not have aligned for us, but the planets sure do!)
Well, Wiki uses this webpage that uses data from NASA. I sent an e-mail to the NASA webmaster, hoping he can forward it on to the nearest rocket scientist. Hopefully an answer will be more forthcoming than Neptune.
I’m betting my calculations were accurate, but that reality doesn’t reflect the math quite perfectly. There have been a bunch of leap days since 1846, which might throw off the exact day. I’m willing to accept NASA’s info stating that the actual Neptunian birthday is July 12.
However, someone already changed the wikipedia article (without changing the citations). So I guess that’s the new reality.
Ah, maybe that’s why no one showed up to my last “Celebrate Periodic Orbits of Discrete Annual Values!” party. They were all probably mobbing my door a day or two early. Right? That’s why none of you came, right? Why weren’t you talking to me at Dave’s Superbowl party the next week?
I would have thought that we would have these types of orbital dynamics questions down to a science by now. Are you sure you don’t need to convert to metric somewhere in there?
According to NASA, the orbital period is 60,190 days; the first observation to recognize Neptune as a planet is said to have been in the evening. I presume that by this they mean long enough after sunset to be sufficiently dark, but not so late as to demand being called morning – say, around 10:00 pm, give or take a couple of hours. If there are better sources, (such as Galle’s notes) online, I don’t know where to look.
