Neptune The Dreamer

In 1612, Galileo gazed through his little telescope (practically a toy by today s standards) and saw what looked like a dim star — except that, unlike the other stars, it moved. He even drew a picture of it, and if he d been thinking, he would have realized that it was a planet. Alas, he didn t put two and two together, and he missed the opportunity to identify Neptune. 

In NASA photographs, Neptune looks like a luminous turquoise marble, almost without features. Astronomers classify Neptune as a gas giant because, like Uranus, it s essentially a ball of gasses swirling around a metal core. It sports a dim halo of barely visible rings and has at least eight moons, including Triton — the coldest place in the solar system. 

---