{"id":776,"date":"2011-07-12T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-07-12T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mjhinton.com\/wild\/?p=776"},"modified":"2011-07-12T06:00:00","modified_gmt":"2011-07-12T12:00:00","slug":"on-july-12th-the-far-flung-planet-neptune-will-complete-its-first-full-orbit-of-the-sun-since-its-extraordinary-discovery-on-the-night-of-september-23rd-1846","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.ahwilderness.com\/?p=776","title":{"rendered":"On July 12th the far-flung planet Neptune will complete its first full orbit of the Sun since its extraordinary discovery on the night of September 23rd, 1846."},"content":{"rendered":"

The Sky This Week, 2011 July 5 – 12 \u00e2\u20ac\u201d Naval Oceanography Portal<\/a> <\/p>\n

\n

The end of the week marks an interesting historical \u00e2\u20ac\u0153anniversary\u00e2\u20ac\u009d of sorts.  On July 12th the far-flung planet Neptune will complete its first full orbit of the Sun since its extraordinary discovery<\/font> on the night of September 23rd, 1846.  On that crisp autumn evening nearly 165 years ago two German astronomers, Johann Galle and Heinrich d\u00e2\u20ac\u2122Arrest, pointed the 9-inch refractor at the Berlin Observatory to a patch of sky in the constellation Aquarius where the French mathematician Urbain J.J. Le Verrier predicted that they would find a planet.  Using a newly-compiled but unchecked star atlas the astronomers quickly found a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153star\u00e2\u20ac\u009d that was not on the map about one degree away from the place where the new planet was predicted to be.  Careful examination showed the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153star\u00e2\u20ac\u009d to have a tiny pale blue disc, and thus Neptune was revealed.  Le Verrier\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s prediction was based on irregular motions of the planet Uranus, and similar reasoning by the English mathematician John Couch Adams led to a similar solution.  Neither Adams nor Le Verrier could muster much interest in the search for the planet in their own countries; Le Verrier\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s letter to the director of the Berlin Observatory ultimately led to the find.  While Galle and d\u00e2\u20ac\u2122Arrest are given credit for Neptune\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s discovery, they were not the first people to see it.  In December of 1612 and January of 1613 none other than the famous Galileo recorded it as a faint background star near Jupiter, but his crude telescope couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t show Neptune\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s slow movement against the background stars.<\/font><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The Sky This Week, 2011 July 5 – 12 \u00e2\u20ac\u201d Naval Oceanography Portal<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Sky This Week, 2011 July 5 – 12 \u00e2\u20ac\u201d Naval Oceanography Portal The end of the week marks an interesting historical \u00e2\u20ac\u0153anniversary\u00e2\u20ac\u009d of sorts.  On July 12th the far-flung planet Neptune will complete its first full orbit of the Sun since its extraordinary discovery on the night of September 23rd, 1846.  On that crisp … Continue reading On July 12th the far-flung planet Neptune will complete its first full orbit of the Sun since its extraordinary discovery on the night of September 23rd, 1846.<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sky"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ahwilderness.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ahwilderness.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ahwilderness.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ahwilderness.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ahwilderness.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=776"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.ahwilderness.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ahwilderness.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ahwilderness.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ahwilderness.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}