what is the nickname for the great dark spot on planet Neptune?
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There are two.  "El Darko" and "unlit"
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Hi. Usually a streak of color or brightness on a planet like Jupiter. Caused by striations in the clouds.
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Earth: The Lone Pale Blue Dot?\nNovember 02, 2006 \n\nA recent photo from the Cassini spacecraft shows the mighty planet Saturn, and if you look very closely between its wing-like rings, a faint pinprick of light. That tiny dot is Earth bustling with life as we know it. The image is the second ever taken of our world from deep space. The first, captured by the Voyager spacecraft in 1990, stunned many people, including the famous astronomer Carl Sagan who called our seemingly miniscule planet a "pale blue dot" and "the only home we've ever known." \n\nLast September, a portion of Cassini's picture showing Earth was unveiled to an auditorium full of scientists attending the third Pale Blue Dot workshop at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago. The workshop brought together scientists from across the country and beyond to talk about how to find life elsewhere in our universe, a central theme in the interdisciplinary field of astrobiology. When the workshop participants were presented with the picture, they spontaneously began to clap. One of their fundamental goals is to capture a portrait like Cassini's showing another "pale blue dot" like Earth in a planetary system beyond our own. \n\nIf scientists do ever acquire such a photo, how will they figure out whether anybody is home? Workshop participant Dr. Wes Traub of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena says a photo of a light-blue extrasolar planet - a planet outside our solar system - might indicate the planet has an atmosphere, a tantalizing sign that it could support life. "In our solar system, we are the only small light-blue planet," he said. Earth appears blue because its atmosphere scatters blue light around, literally filling the sky with the color blue. \n\nBut colors are only clues. A planet with an atmosphere might be blue, or not. Mars has an atmosphere, albeit a thin one, and it's red. The blue light in the martian skies is soaked up by iron-containing molecules on the surface that radiate red. \n\nUltimately, astrobiologists will need additional data to determine whether an extrasolar planet is habitable, and if so, whether it harbors life. Future planet-finding missions like NASA's Terrestrial Planet Finder are expected to return both valuable "spectral" data and imagery of planets looking small enough to fit on a pin. Spectra are surveys of an object's rainbow-like array of different wavelengths of light. They reveal the presence of specific molecules. \n\nTo determine if a planet is livable, scientists will look for carbon dioxide and water vapor, signposts that a planet has an atmosphere and oceans, respectively. Atmospheres not only provide air to breathe, but also act like blankets to keep a planet warm and help buffer potential residents from damaging ultraviolet and cosmic rays. Oceans help regulate a planet's temperature and provide liquid water, an essential ingredient for life on Earth. \n\nOther molecules enveloping a planet, such as oxygen, ozone and methane, can suggest that life itself has taken root. On Earth, oxygen is "breathed out" by plants, and methane by micro-creatures living in swamps and animals. These chemicals don't stick around for long on their own, so if they are hanging around an extrasolar planet, then something must be pumping the stuff out. That something could be life, but this isn't always the case. Saturn's moon's Titan is shrouded in an atmosphere containing lots of methane not produced by life. \n\nScientists say that oxygen is a more reliable sign of life than methane, but if they found large quantities of both, they'd be more convinced. "Finding two of these molecules together would be much better than one. The more, the better," said Dr. Victoria Meadows of NASA's Spitzer Science Center, Pasadena, who served as chair of the third Pale Blue Dot conference. "For example, if we found carbon diox
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It's called a Great Circle
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The 'surface' (and I use the term loosely) of gas giants like Neptune is defined to be where the atmospheric pressure is equal to the sea level pressure of Earth.\n\nThis means that the surface is actually gaseous.\n\nFurther down though there is probably a solid core and liquid ocean.
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Neptune also has 2,500 km/h winds of hydrogen, helium, and methane that gives the planet its blue appearance. Neptune weather is characterized by extremely violent hurricanes, whose winds reach 1,000 mph.
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What sort of features are you hoping to see? An 80mm would be enough to see the red spot on Jupiter and the rings of Saturn. It probably won't make out the Cassini division in the rings, though.  You should also be able to see cloud bands on Jupiter. When looking at Mars, you might be ble to see some dark splotches during excellent seeing conditions, but Mars is a hard object for everyone. The most you will ever see on Venus is the phase because the clouds obscure everything else. Mercury is a hard object and is way too small to see anything. Uranus will be a blue dot as will Neptune. You won't see Pluto.\n\nI hope this helps!
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Venus.\n\nAnd since no one else is citing an authoritative source:\n\nhttp://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap950815.html\n\n" Venus: Earth's Sister Planet"
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he Very Large Telescope (VLT) has caught a remarkable image of the planet Uranus circled by some of its moons.\n\nThe rings of the planet - which is 3,000 million kilometres away from Earth - are clearly displayed in the image.\n\nThe rings are almost undetectable from Earth in visible light.\n\nThe VLT is located at the European Southern Observatory's Paranal Observatory in Chile.\n\nThe image was obtained in the near-infrared, and includes seven of the planet's moons.\n\nVLT\nVLT is based at Paranal in Chile\nTwo of the moons in the picture, Puck and Portia, were only found in the 1980s as the Voyager probe prepared for its flyby of the planet.\n\nUranus, which is at a distance from the Earth equivalent to 20 times the distance between the Earth and Sun, was first spotted by William Herschel in 1781.
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Venus, Uranus, and Pluto
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ok here we go !!!!\n\n \nASTRONOMY QUIZ ANSWERS\n\nHere is the astronomy answers fir the quiz at the millsberry acadomy lab...\n\n1.caloris basin\n2.subsolar point\n3.venus\n4.phobus and deimos\n5.set of thousand rings\n6.metal\n7.venus\n8.northern\n9.thick atmosphere\n10.false\n11.love and beauty\n12.iron\n13.hydrogen and helium\n14.true\n15.true\n16.underground ocean\n17.saturn\n18.-29.5\n19.great red spot\n20.crystallized ammonia\n21.ice\n22.asteroids\n23.a month\n24.venus,pluto,uranus\n25.spiral\n26.gas\n27.false\n28.mercury\n29.meteor\n30.away from the sun\n31.orion
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In our galaxy it would be Pluto, but in other galaxies I'm sure its a planet that has never been discovered yet.\n\nEdited to add: No I meant galaxy - as in The Milky Way. I didn't mention the new 'planet' as it hasn't been approved as one yet.\n\nAnd ps next time get the name right! ;)
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http://www.exploratorium.edu/snacks/blind_spot.html
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Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn AND Uranus (many people forget this one)\n\nWith a magnitude of 5.8, Uranus is visible with an unaided eye.\n\nIt is so faint, and moves so slowly, however, that it wasn't identified as a planet until after the telescope was invented.\n\nHowever, on a very dark night and if you know exactly where to look (and have good vision), Uranus is visible with the naked eye.
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The Gnomon;\nPicture at this link.\nhttp://www.rnzih.org.nz/pages/sundial2.htm
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It is the BIG DIPPER (made of 7 stars) and then the NORTH STAR on thr right above it . I am here too , but ( not like my Mom , bunjiebabe ) I know the real historical answer . A boy named Benny Benson created it in 1927 .
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Dark Comets by Shapen