We Now Know How Long a Day on Neptune Is

I'll keep this blog really short today. I found this neat little factoid on the internet this morning, and I thought I would share it with you.

By tracking atmospheric features on Neptune, a University of Arizona planetary scientist has accurately determined the planet’s rotation, a feat that had not been previously achieved for any of the gas planets in our solar system except Jupiter.

A day on Neptune lasts precisely 15 hours, 57 minutes and 59 seconds, according to the first accurate measurement of its rotational period made by planetary scientist Erich Karkoschka.

His result is one of the largest improvements in determining the rotational period of a gas planet in almost 350 years since Italian astronomer Giovanni Cassini made the first observations of Jupiter’s Red Spot.

“The rotational period of a planet is one of its fundamental properties,” said Karkoschka, a senior staff scientist at the UA’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory. “Neptune has two features observable with the Hubble Space Telescope that seem to track the interior rotation of the planet. Nothing similar has been seen before on any of the four giant planets.”

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