Thirteen Ways to Look at Neptune

I.

In many of his stories, HP Lovecraft would mention Neptune and the species of creature that inhabited it. In “The Whisperer in Darkness,” Neptune is referred to as “Yaksh” and is inhabited by mysterious beings. No one quite knows what these creatures look like precisely, only that it was the brain of one of these creatures, combined with “Three humans” and “six fungoid beings who can’t navigate space corporeally” that comprised the contents of the Mi-go’s brain cylinder. Later, in “Through the Gates of the Silver Key,” the creatures of Neptune are described as “hellish white fungi.”

Upon its recognition during the Voyager 2 mission, the Great Dark Spot of Neptune was the center of focus for many Lovecraftians. A large hole in the ozone, and covered by a thick layering of white clouds, this noticeable blemish on an almost entirely blue planetary surface was theorized as perhaps, instead, being ”a strange, endemic, atmospheric community of fungi.” Enthusiasts of HP Lovecraft thought this might be the case, to lead to the conclusion that Lovecraft predicted the existence of fungus-based creatures on Neptune, decades before it was confirmed.

II.

Gustav Holst. The Planets, Op. 32. Neptune, the Mystic. First composed between the years 1914 and 1916. First performed, with instant success, in 1920. When Holst scored this work as a movement for two dueting pianos in synchronization, just as Uranus and Neptune are synchronized in size, composition, and proximity to one another, he used a large organ to represent this planet. According to Holst, the piano could not actually convey the emotion, feeling, and overall aura of a planet as mysterious, mystic, and hazy as Neptune. Beautiful harp and string melodies glide over each other in harmony at the beginning of the piece, until Holst unveils the crowning glory: a mystical and haunting choir, giving the music an otherworldly, transcendental quality.

III.

Neptune, Island of Dhodhekanisos, Greece. Distance from the Sea: Less than 1 mile.

Neptune, HaDarom Region, Israel. Distance from the Sea: Less than 1 mile.

Neptune, Alaska, United States. Distance from the Sea: 1 mile.

Neptune’s Staircase, Scotland, UK. Distance from the Sea: 2 miles.

Neptune City, New Jersey, United States. Distance from the Sea: 2 miles.

Neptune, Rhone-Alpes Region, France. Distance from the Sea: 151 miles.

Neptune, Tennessee, United States. Distance from the Sea: 390 miles.

Neptune, Ohio, United States. Distance from the Sea: 409 miles.

Neptune, Wisconsin, United States. Distance from the Sea: 684 miles

Neptune, Saskatchewan, Canada. Distance from the Sea: 727 miles

Neptune, Iowa, United States. Distance from the Sea: 885 miles.

IV.

Artist: John Singleton Copley (1738-1815)

Title: The Return of Neptune

Object Type: Painting

Genre: Religious Art

Date: circa 1754

Medium: Oil on Canvas

Dimensions: 27 ½ x 44 ½ in.

Collection: Metropolitan Museum of Art

This charming juvenilia depicting Neptune and his retinue reminds us that Copley and the sitters in his later, mature portraits lived along the New England Coast and were deeply connected—economically and psychologically—to the sea.

V.

“Singing about the Valley of Sunsets

Green and blue, Canyons too

Singing about Atlantis love songs

The Valleys of Neptune is arising”

- Jimi Hendrix, “Valleys of Neptune”

VI.

Mass of Neptune is 1.024 x 10^26 kg. The Mass of the atmosphere of Neptune is roughly 10% of its total weight. In addition to this, helium makes up 19% of Neptune’s atmosphere, which in totality brings the weight of all the helium on the planet Neptune to be 1.945 x 10^24 kg, or 4.289 x 10^24 lbs. Converting this to cubic feet, one finds that a single pound of pure helium produces 96.654 cubic feet of helium, for a grand total of 4.145 x 10^26 cubic feet found on the entire planet of Neptune. Furthermore, the standard price of pure helium in a 20 cft. tank measures at around $150 dollars. Given the exorbitant amount of helium found in Neptune’s atmosphere and the growing concern for the mass shortage of helium on planet Earth, this leads on to wonder. Now, what if we were to, hypothetically, bring the proper containers to the edge of Neptune, appropriate all of its helium resources, return it back to earth, and sell it at this rate? Whoever did so would make a grand total of just over 62 Octillion dollars, or 62,175,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 dollars. Would it destroy the entirety of Neptune’s stability, perhaps throwing it out of orbit and creating a catastrophe at a level of cosmic magnitude? Of course. Would it also make someone 444 quadrillion times richer than Jeff Bezos? Also yes. Capitalism at its finest!

VII.

Cold, mystic, emptiness. A drop of blue in the open maw of the universe. A dense marble plunked into a puddle of obsidian gel. A frozen orb, floating slowly through the galaxy like a lazy glacier. A ship in the night. An indigo gale, screaming and wailing like a banshee, screeching nothing into nothingness. A hurricane, bellowing deep into impossible depths. A frigid child, wandering lonesome in a lagoon of infinite heavens. An icy breath uttered into existence before a silent cosmos. A hollow rock, tumbling down a mountain that knows no direction and reaches no end. A saddened, haunted sphere. Alone forever, explored never. Neptune.

VIII.

It takes one hundred and sixty-five years for the planet Neptune to complete one rotation around the sun. One hundred and sixty-five years. At this precise moment, Neptune is in the same place, in the same position in its lunar path as it was in 1855. Before the Civil War, before the 13th Amendment, before the Wright Brothers took to the sky or Oscar Wilde could write The Picture of Dorian Grey. Neptune, invisible to the naked eye, but still able to be seen by means of telescopes, lies in a pool of black void, hurtling in orbit around the sun, serving as a planetary time capsule into a world that is not fully remembered or collected. If Neptune could talk, perhaps it could show us a time long forgotten, a time rarely recollected.

Two hundred and forty minutes. If a light beam were to project outward from Neptune, into the heavens and towards our Earth, we would not see the first glimpses of it for another two hundred and forty minutes. Four hours. Fourteen thousand seconds. When the headlamps of the thirty-three trapped Chilean miners emerged out of the ground in Copiapò ten years ago, it would not be until nearly four o’clock in the morning until the light from that lamp grazed the atmosphere of the blue giant. In the year 2175, Neptune can rejoice its one-year anniversary since the night of that rescue. Perhaps Neptune will be a little late in celebrating, but perhaps at that point, no one on Earth will have remembered that night in Chile either.

IX.

Such a potent, cosmic aesthetic emanates from your voice as you speak the word. Neptune. Neon, red leather, 1950s science fiction. The Day the Earth Stood Still. Glowing bulbs of purple, red, and yellow, washing over you as you stand outside a concession stand as the drive-in. Starlite drive-in. The outskirts of a small town. Too many cigarettes and someone crooning on the radio in your sleek convertible. Neptune. Slow, haunting swing. Doo-wop with a side of silk. “Come Rain or Come Shine” by Ray Charles. Driving up to the top of a mountain, with the bright, silent city below. Hot pink. 3 o’clock in the morning and no particular place to go. A thin crescent moon hanging over Middle America Suburbia. “Any Day Now” by Sam Cooke. Neptune. An atmosphere so thick in neon and oil that you could grasp it in your hand and dance with it. Pour out your love and spill it upwards until it splashes across the sky, cleaning away the clouds until you could see the great blue planet in the deep night sky. Neptune is the neon bulb of the galaxy; the flashing sign inviting you inside a smoky diner while “Sleepwalk” Ann Farina plays in the back of your head. Soak it in. Indulge in Neptune and all it can give.

X.

Discovered in 1948 by Johann Galle, Neptune is the eighth planet in our solar system. Being the third biggest, Neptune is also the densest of all planets in the sun’s orbit. Facts regarding its size, composition, and position in the sky. While invisible to the human eye, it can be seen through telescopes both in the earth’s atmosphere and on the ground. Nevertheless, the findings of this planet remain nearly invisible, as there is very little we understand about this swirling hurricane of a celestial object. We understand it to be a dense, hydrogen, and helium-based planet, with many “ices” included in its makeup. Methane, water, and ammonia also fill its atmosphere, while the core of the planet is theorized to be rock and ice. Neptune houses 14 moons, which is the fourth amongst other planets in the solar system. Just 17 days after the discovery of Neptune itself, astronomers discovered the largest of its moons: Triton.

Neptune is the large, blue ice ball in the sky, at the edge of our solar system. Farther than that, scientists no longer classify any celestial objects as planets, merely large rocks. Neptune is the dense, icy, guardian of the solar system, holding the tail of this planetary alignment, assuring all on Earth that the solar system has an end; this cosmic train has, and will always have, this definitive, assuring, unwavering caboose.

XI.

Neptune, the Roman God of the Seam is the ruler of Pisces. According to the most knowledgeable of astrologists, Neptune is the planet that dictates over inspiration, dreams, psychic receptivity, illusion, and confusion. While it rules over all things spiritual, it also controls all that is subtle in nature. Neptune is youthful; it is naïve yet intuitive, and is blessed with enlightenment, Neptune is the celestial body of mercy and compassion, but also deception, trickery, and addiction.

Due to its slow movement across the heavenly sky, the position of Neptune by a person’s sign will be shared by those within the same generation and age. This is why we refer to Neptune’s sign as a “Generational Influence.” Influence plays a key role in its importance, since the qualities of Neptune’s sign, especially when tied to personal planets, reveal to us what we may envision in an ideal world.

Neptune’s glyph resembles a trident that likens to the one that the Roman God of the sea often wields. The crescent of the trident, representing spiritual receptivity, is placed above the cross, or handle, of matter. The symbolization that this glyph evokes is the yearning of one’s soul to break free from the restrictions and limitations of both matter and reality.

XII.

61% of people believe that there is some form of life on other planets.

17% rule this out.

22% say that they do not know.

47% of people believe in the existence of intelligent alien civilizations in the universe. 26% rule this out.

28% say that they do not know.

25% believe that the first form of life on earth arrived here from another place in the universe.

39% do not believe this

36% say they do not know.

Of the 47% of people who believe that advanced alien civilizations exist,

60% say that humans should try to get in contact with these civilizations.

21% say that we should not try to seek contact.

19% say that they do not know.

XIII.

Neptune. God of Water and Sea. Son of Saturn, god of Generation, and Ops, goddess of Fertility. Brother to Jupiter, god of the Sky, Pluto, god of the Underworld, Juno, goddess of Fertility and Marriage, Ceres, goddess of Agriculture, and Vesta, goddess of the Hearth and Home. Consort of Salacia, the female divinity of the sea, and goddess of Salt Water. Neptune, also worshipped as the god of Horses, had only one temple devoted to him, in Rome. It stood nearby to the Circus Flaminius, a Roman racetrack, and was one of only four Roman gods with whom citizens could make sacrifices of bulls. Neptune, being one, was also accompanied in this honor with Apollo, Mars, and Jupiter. In his lifetime, Neptune was said to have sired four children: Triton, Proteus, Rhodes, and Benthesikyme. In depictions of him in art, one can often see Neptune amongst a string of horses, and wielding a giant Trident.