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How many light minutes is Neptune from the Sun? 

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Samuel Chiltern Profile
Samuel Chiltern answered
Neptune is approximately 255 light minutes away from the Sun. This means that it takes the light from the Sun almost four and a quarter hours to reach the planet.

If you contrast this with Earth, which sunlight only takes 8.5 minutes to reach, then this gives you a pretty good idea of how much farther away Neptune is from the Sun.

In other units of measurement, you could say that Neptune is 4.5 billion kilometres away, or 2.8 billion miles, if you prefer.

The distances of all planets from the Sun (as quoted by scientists) is an average. This is because the orbit of each planet doesn't follow a precise circle - but tends to form an ellipsis curve instead.

Whenever a planet reaches its closest point to the Sun, it is said to be at perihelion, which for Neptune measures a distance of 4.45 billion kilometres from the Sun.

When a planet reaches it's farthest point, it's known as aphelion, and for Neptune, this is 4.55 billion kilometres away from the Sun.
Ellie Hoe Profile
Ellie Hoe answered
Neptune is the farthest planet in the Solar system, and its distance from the Sun is 30 Astronomical Units. One astronomical Unit is the average distance between the Sun and the Earth.

Now we know that Earth is at a distance of approximately 8.5 light minutes from the Sun, so we can do the math using the information that Neptune is 30 times the distance between Earth and Sun.

Therefore we have 30 X 8.5 = 255 light minutes, or in other words 4.25 light hours from the Sun.

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