Chapter Nine:
Chapter nine begins with the final stop of Voyager 2. Neptune is a very mysterious planet because it is so far away from us. To help get a grasp for the distance of Neptune, you can think of it in terms of its orbit around the sun. Since being discovered in 1846, Neptune has yet to complete a full orbit around the sun! It is known as a Neptunian year. Light from Neptune takes a long five hours just to reach us here at Earth. Neptune is one of the four gas giants along with Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus. At its center is a rocky and cold world, but it gets its size from its enormous atmospheres around it. You can't even see its core from the outside of it. Its atmosphere consists of hydrogen, helium, and a bit of methane. Like Saturn, Neptune is surrounded by rings. Neptune's largest moon is Triton, which also has a relatively long orbit. It takes the equivalent of six days on Earth to make one orbit around Neptune.
Chapter Ten:
Chapter ten starts with the sky. Ever wonder why the ski is blue? It is something that we take for granted but actually don't know that much about it. Other worlds have yellow or even green skies. I couldn't even imagine that. Back in the August of 1957, David Simons became the highest human being in the world. He flew a balloon above 100,000 feet in the air. When he looked down at our "blue" sky, he described it to be a "dark, deep purple". The blue that we see is sunlight being reflected by air particles. When sunlight reaches the atmosphere, it gets bounced around. This is called scattering. Blue and violet colors are more energy and get scattered more effectively.
That's Crazy Neptune has never orbited the Earth fully. And that the sky is the color blue because of the light reflection of air particles. I wish we could see it as a deep purple. Good job!
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