• Question: How many seconds or minutes will it take a light to go from earth to Neptune?

    Asked by anon-267491 on 9 Nov 2020.
    • Photo: Sam Geen

      Sam Geen answered on 9 Nov 2020:

      This is actually a trickier question than you might think! Check out this fact sheet from NASA: https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/neptunefact.html

      Planets aren’t fixed in space – they’re orbiting the Sun, and each planet moves at different speeds. You need to move faster closer to the Sun to balance gravity.

      NASA says that the distance from Earth to Neptune goes from 4305.9 million kilometres to 4687.3 million kilometres. This means that light takes anywhere from 4 to 4 and a half hours to get between the two planets.

      The distance to planets is important for planning space missions – it’s easier to send a rocket to Mars at certain times when it’s closer to us than when it’s on the other side of the Sun.

    • Photo: Daisy Shearer

      Daisy Shearer answered on 9 Nov 2020:

      Neptune is around four light-hours away from the Earth on average. So that means it would take around four hours. But because both the Earth and Neptune are orbiting the sun at different speeds, this distance will change depending on the relative distance between the two planets.

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