Reaching 2,400 kilometers per hour (1,500 miles per hour), Neptune's winds are the strongest in the solar system.

Since 1989, storms resembling Jupiter's Great Red Spot have been observed on Neptune, but darker and lasting no more than a few years.

Neptune is the farthest planet from the sun, orbiting 30 times farther than Earth and taking 165 years to complete one revolution.

If the Earth stopped spinning, 85% of the world's population would experience supersonic winds

The planet's equator moves about 470 meters per second—over 1,000 miles per hour—and air there would continue moving at this speed for several minutes if the ground stopped rotating. These conditions would cause tsunamis, global storms, and fling debris fast enough to destroy nearly all human-made structures.

In 2025, astronomers confirmed that Neptune has auroras, which were observed at mid-latitudes because its magnetic field is tilted 47 degrees from its rotation axis.

Despite being called 'ice giants,' Uranus and Neptune do not contain plentiful frozen water—the term refers to their abundance of elements heavier than hydrogen and helium.

Juno has revealed Jupiter’s polar cyclones, complex atmosphere, and diffuse core

The continent-sized cyclones at Jupiter’s poles generate strong winds and ammonia-laden storms. The spacecraft has also collected data on Jupiter’s unique magnetic field, which resembles a blend of Earth’s and Uranus/Neptune's.

Tidally locked exoplanets experience extreme atmospheric temperatures

On worlds like WASP 76b, which orbits its host star approximately 3% the Earth-sun distance, temperatures on its day side can vaporize iron. Winds more than 14 times the speed of sound blow this material to its night side, where it condenses and falls as liquid metal.

The intensity of auroral activity approximately follows the sun's 11-year cycle

The density, speed, and temperature of material ejected by the sun are at their lowest at the start of each cycle, resulting in weaker interactions with Earth's magnetic field and muted, diffuse auroras. While the average solar wind speed is about 300 kilometers (186 miles) per second, the fastest winds can be more than three times faster.

Explore a 3D interactive visualization of Neptune, the smallest of the solar system's giant planets.

The sun emits a continuous stream of plasma known as the solar wind

Composed of charged particles—electrons and ions—the solar wind is deflected around the Earth by the planet's magnetic field. More powerful solar storms, known as coronal mass ejections, are short-lived but produce huge clouds of plasma that disrupt technology upon reaching Earth.

While published images have suggested that Neptune is much bluer than Uranus, the two ice giants are a similarly pale shade of greenish-blue.

The Great Red Spot, Jupiter's largest storm, has existed for nearly 200 years

Despite decreasing in size, the anticyclone remains larger than Earth, rotating with winds up to 933 km/h. Its longevity may be because it is trapped between two opposite-flowing jet streams, which act like two conveyor belts.

Violent storms and crushing pressure await those inside Jupiter’s Great Red Spot

As seen from space, Jupiter’s most striking feature is an anticyclone 30% larger than Earth, with winds twice the speed of Category 5 hurricanes. The descent into the storm brings enough pressure to strip atoms of their electrons.

Astronomers inferred Neptune's existence through mathematics while attempting to explain irregularities in Uranus' orbit, but Neptune had been directly observed 234 years earlier by Galileo.

Watch a simulated flight through Jupiter's Great Red Spot

Since its discovery over 350 years ago, the anticyclonic storm—with a high-pressure center and flows opposite to the low-pressure system underneath it—has fascinated astronomers due to its size, which is larger than Earth's, and its prominent features, including winds that surpass 250 miles per hour.

Although no such planet exists in our solar system, the most common subtype of exoplanet in the galaxy is the sub-Neptune world, which is larger than Earth but smaller than the ice giants.

As of 2026, 14 of Neptune's 16 moons have been named for mythological figures, with Triton, the largest of them, orbiting backward, or in retrograde.

How neutron stars resemble Earth, including harboring an atmosphere and 'mountains'

These stars maintain an atmosphere of hydrogen, helium, and carbon at approximately 2,000,000 degrees Celsius (3,600,000 degrees Fahrenheit), only a few thousandths of a millimeter thick, which envelops "mountains" about a millimeter high. Its interior consists of an inner and an outer crust surrounding inner and outer cores, all held together by enormous gravitational forces despite spinning multiple times a second.

A return to Uranus

There's been only one mission to Uranus before—Voyager 2 passed by the ice giant in 1986 before heading off into interstellar space. NASA's recent planned itinerary for space missions lists Uranus as the highest priority over the next decade. The seventh planet is 20 times as far from the sun as Earth, and researchers say its study will shed light on how the outer half of the Solar System formed.

A look at Uranus, our distant icy cousin

NASA provides a profile of the seventh planet from the sun and the third largest—Uranus. More than just a punchline, the planet is cold, windy, and utterly inhospitable. It's also a lovely blue-green, due to the large amounts of methane it contains, with faint rings and two dozen moons. Learn more about this not-so-gentle gas giant.

Watch a visualization of how Earth's oceans impact its atmosphere, weather, and climate.

Neutron star types, categorized by the presence of strong magnetic fields and radiation beams

Magnetars have magnetic fields about 1,000 times stronger than the average neutron star—roughly a trillion times stronger than Earth's. Pulsars emit beams of radiation from their magnetic poles, which appear as flickering radio wave signals as the object spins.

Trade winds blow from east to west due to the Coriolis Effect

Warm air rises near the equator while cooler air sinks near the poles, creating circulation patterns that curve due to Earth's rotation. At the equator, doldrums—calm regions of no wind—build warm, moist air, creating storms.

Except for Mercury, every planet in the solar system experiences auroras

Lacking magnetic fields, Venus and Mars exhibit auroras when the solar wind collides directly with their atmospheres, without deflection. Some particles behind the atmospheric collisions that generate auroras on gas giants come from their moons and the surrounding environments.

Differences in pressure and temperature between atmospheric gases create wind

Because Earth's surface is not uniformly heated by the sun at all times, pockets of warmer and cooler air will form and interact. Warmer pockets of less dense air will rise, leaving gaps for cooler, denser air to move in. Wind is this movement of air from high-pressure to low-pressure areas.

Neutron stars, the remains of some massive stars after they explode in a supernova, are the densest directly observable objects in the universe.

Space weather phenomena, including solar flares, coronal mass ejections, and solar wind, are driven by the sun's magnetic field and can affect Earth's ground- and space-based technological systems.

Earth's magnetic field can trap high-energy charged particles produced by the sun and distant cosmic events in doughnut-shaped rings called Van Allen belts.

Heat slowly moves through Earth's mantle like softened wax

Energy trapped during Earth's formation and released via the radioactivity of elements is carried by convection currents towards the surface, while cooler, denser material sinks. The planet's core is almost as hot as the sun's surface.

Diamond rain is thought to form within Uranus and Neptune, whose interiors can compress carbon atoms from methane into these falling crystals.

Hurricane conditions are created in a University of Miami wind-wave tank

The SUrge-STructure-Atmosphere INteraction Wind Wave Laboratory contains a 38,000-gallon wave pool connected to a wind tunnel that can generate air currents of up to 155 mph. SUSTAIN allows scientists to study how the atmosphere interacts with the ocean in extreme weather.

Explaining pulsars, the cosmic clocks and lighthouses of the universe

As of 2023, over 3,000 of these rapidly rotating neutron stars have been discovered, which contain magnetic fields along which energized particles accelerate and emit light, including X-rays, gamma rays, visible light, and, most commonly, radio waves. The fastest of these, PSR J1748–2446ad, rotates 716 times per second, meaning its surface equator moves at about 24% the speed of light.

Surface ocean currents are primarily driven by wind, tides, and Earth's rotation, while deep-ocean currents are driven by differences in temperature and salt concentration.

Everything you need to know about Jupiter, the gas giant

NASA introduces you to the fifth planet from the sun, the gas giant Jupiter. When it comes to our solar system, Jupiter is the biggest kid on the block. Named after the king of the Ancient Roman gods, Jupiter is a planet of storms and chaos, most famously in its Great Red Spot, a hurricane larger than the earth itself.

A look inside neutron stars, which are thought to contain nuclear pasta

Simulations show that beneath the outer crust of these objects, the gravitational force is so extreme that atomic nuclei link together into chains of primarily neutrons and some protons called nuclear spaghetti. Deeper in the star, these links combine to form sheets—nuclear lasagna—a quintillion times stronger than steel, making it the strongest material in the universe.

The biggest ocean waves in the world, which regularly reach between 80 and 100 feet, are primarily caused by a 140-mile-long submarine canyon that reaches a maximum depth of 16,000 feet.

View a gallery of photographs of Neptune taken during NASA missions.

Wind is the movement of air caused by the sun's uneven heating of Earth

The tilt, curvature, and variations in Earth's surface composition across the globe cause different regions to receive different amounts of solar radiation. As the Earth spins and tries to achieve thermal equilibrium, air masses move and interact, creating wind.

Wind turbines explained

Wind turbines have powered homes since 1887, and today they’re stronger, quieter, and more reliable than ever. Offshore wind could power millions and grow fast enough to meet climate goals.

Track the location of the Voyager probes, currently between 13 and 15 billion miles away from Earth.

Hurricanes, which rely on air consistently spinning in the same direction, cannot cross the equator because air curves in opposite directions north and south of it.

James Webb telescope shows new views of Uranus

Following in the footsteps of the Neptune image released in 2022, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has taken a stunning image of the solar system’s other ice giant, the planet Uranus. The new image features dramatic rings as well as bright features in the planet’s atmosphere.

The dynamo theory explains how planets generate their own magnetic fields

According to the theory, a large magnetic field generator, or dynamo, is created when liquid metal flows through the planet's outer core, producing electric currents that generate a magnetic field. Magnetization patterns in rocks on the surface of planets can serve as evidence for the presence of this internal structure at some point in the celestial object's past.

The top several meters of the world's oceans can hold as much thermal energy as the entire atmosphere.

When it formed 4.5 billion years ago, Jupiter was twice its current size

Its original size was deduced from the orbits of its moons, Amalthea and Thebe. The planet's magnetic field was also 50 times stronger than today, or 400 times stronger than Earth's.

View galleries of images taken by the Voyager spacecraft, including close-ups of Uranus, Jupiter's Great Red Spot, Saturn's ring system, and Neptune's Great Dark Spot.

Why the edge of Earth's atmosphere varies depending on which property is considered

As the distance from Earth's center increases, the planet's gravitational force weakens, causing it to gradually lose its ability to retain gases at the farthest edge of its atmosphere—the exosphere. At a height of approximately 200,000 kilometers (124,000 miles)—halfway to the Moon—the exosphere has so little density that it is indistinguishable from interstellar space.

Planets' high orbital speeds prevent them from falling into their host star

Although the gravitational force attracts a planet and the star it orbits around, the large speed the planet orbits with, which is acquired during its formation process, causes it to continuously miss the star as it orbits around it. This is analogous to theoretically throwing a baseball horizontally faster and faster until it's fast enough to orbit the Earth while attempting to fall to its surface.

Rapid intensification is the increase in a hurricane's sustained wind speed by at least 35 miles per hour within 24 hours, which can strengthen it by up to two categories.

Nor'easters can produce thundersnow—lightning in blizzard conditions

Although thunderstorms typically require warm air to rise in updrafts and collide with heavier soft hail, which creates charge separation and eventual electrical discharge, these cyclones can replicate these conditions by churning the atmosphere through strong winds. Rarely, especially warm lakes can similarly help generate thunderstorms during the winter.