Neptune

At a meeting of the French Academy of Science, M. Leverrier presented a fifth and final memoir on the new planet, which M. Arago proposes to be called Neptune.

It was on the first day of the new year that the announcement was made, almost simultaneously from three observatories, that the motion of the planet Neptune, the outermost of all the planets that wheel about the sun, had become very erratic. Ogilvy had already called attention to a suspected retardation in its velocity in December. Such a piece of news was scarcely calculated to interest a world the greater portion of whose inhabitants were unaware of the existence of the planet Neptune, nor outside the astronomical profession did the subsequent discovery of a faint remote speck of light in the region of the perturbed planet cause any very great excitement. Scientific people, however, found the intelligence remarkable enough, even before it became known that the new body was rapidly growing larger and brighter, that its motion was quite different from the orderly progress of the planets, and that the deflection of Neptune and its satellite was becoming now of an unprecedented kind.

The duration of planetary orbits ranges widely. Mercury — the closest planet to the sun — has an 88-day orbit, while Earth, the third from the sun, takes 365 days (1 year). Mars needs almost twice that time to fly around the sun, while Saturn takes 10,759 days (29.4 years). Neptune, the furthest planet from the sun, has an orbit of 60,190 days (164.9 years).

And Pitheus alſo had giuen it out abroad, that he was begotten of Neptune, becauſe the TROEZENIANS haue this god in great veneration, and doe worſhip him as patron and protector of their citie, making offerings to him of their firſt fruits: and they haue for the marke and ſtamp of their money, the three picked mace, which is the ſigne of Neptune, called his Trident.