Neptune’s Discovery Story - COSMOS in a minute #26

Neptune is the only planet in the solar system to have been predicted before its discovery. In the early 1800s, astronomers noticed that Uranus was behaving strangely. Its orbit was not quite what it was supposed to be. They figured that there must be another planet out there, tugging on Uranus' gravity and causing it to wobble. Two English astronomers independently used math to calculate the location of this mystery planet. Finally, on September 23, 1846, a German astronomer named Galle looked in the sky and found Neptune right where it was predicted to be. This was a major triumph for mathematics and astronomy. It showed that the laws of gravity could be used to predict the existence of objects that had never been seen before. And it paved the way for future discoveries, such as the dwarf planet Pluto.

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