Neptune and Uranus

The gas giants of our solar system are Uranus and Neptune and they are connected in an interesting way. Uranus was discovered by William Herschel in 1781 and named it George after King George III of Britain. Astronomers outside of Britain were not fond of that name and rejected it, settling on Uranus of Greek mythology nearly 70 years later. It has 28 known moons, a number of then can be observed with larger telescopes and four can be seen in the image to the right.

Neptune is the only planet that wasn’t discovered by visual observation. In 1821, astronomers noticed Uranus wasn’t following the orbit that had been calculated for it, leading them to believe that something must be having a gravitational effect on the planet. It took 20 years of studies and calculations before a predicted location of said object would be, and when they pointed a telescope there, they found Neptune within one degree of that location.