Johann Gottfried Galle
His Early Life
Galle was born in the Papsthaus [a house in the pabst woods] on June 9, 1812. He attended the Gymnasium of Wittenberg and studied at the Friedrich-Wilhelm’s-Universitat Berlin from 1830 to 1833. He became a teacher Gymnasium of Guben, teaching mathematics and physics. Later on he switched to Berlin.

Berlin Observatory
He started working as an assistant to Johann Franz Encke in 1835. He immediately followed the completion of the New Berlin Observatory. Galle worked there for the next 16 years. In 1838 he discovered an inner, darker ring of Saturn. From December 2, 1839 to March 6, 1840 he discovered 3 comets.

Breslau Observatory
In 1851 he moved to Breslau {today Wroclaw} to become the director of the local observatory. In 1856 he became a Professor of Astronomy at the Schlesischen Freddrich-Wilhelms-Universitat Breslau. He worked in Breslau for 45 years. For the academic year 1875/76 he was elected as Rector. Rector meant ruler. At Breslau he dealt with the exact determination of planetary orbits and developed methods for calculating the height of the aurorae and the path of meteors, and consolidated the data for all 414 comets discovered up to 1894 into one work {with help from his son}. Otherwise he concerned himself with the Earth’s magnetic field and climatology. Altogether he published 200 works. An aurora was a natural light in the sky.
Later years
In 1897 Galle returned to Potsdam, where he died at the age 98. He was survived by his wife and two sons-Andres Galle and Georg Galle {1850-1946}. Two craters, one on the moon and the “happy face” on mars, the asteroid 2097 Galle a Ring of Neptune have been named in his honor.

Discovering Neptune
Around the same time in 1845 he sent a copy of his thesis to Urbain Le Verrier but only received an answer a year later. Sent on September 18, 1846, it reached Galle on the morning of 23 of September. Le Verrier had been investigating the perturbations of the orbit of the planet Uranus and from his derived the position of a still undiscovered planet. He requested Galle to search on the corresponding section of the sky. The very same night (after Encke gave permission to search, against his own judgment), in collaboration with his assistant Heinrich Louis d’Arrest. Galle discovered an 8th star, Only 1 degree from the calculations. Over the next two evenings, a proper motion of the celestial object of 4 seconds of arc was measured. He determined it was a planet. Galle always refused to be acknowledging as a discoverer of Neptune; he attributed the discovery Le Verrier.
In 1847 Galle was designed as the successor to Freddrich Wilhelms Bessel as a Director of the Konigsberg Observatory. Before the enacted nomination from Friedrich Wilhelm IV effected de facto, Galle withdrew his application at the beginning of 1848 due to an intrigue against him led by Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi.

Neptune
Neptune is the eighth and farthest planet from the sun in the solar system. It is the fourth largest planet by diameter and third-largest by mass. Among the gaseous planet in the solar system it is dense. Neptune 17 times the mass of Earth and slightly more massive than its near twin Uranus, which is 15 times the mass of earth but not dense. Neptune orbits the Sun at an average distance of 30.1 astronomical units. Named after the Roman god of the sea, its astronomical symbol is ♆, a stylised version of the god Neptune trident.
Neptune was first planet to be found by mathematical prediction rather than by empirical observation. An empirical observation is a source of knowledge acquired by means of observation or experimentation. Neptune has 14 moons. It goes Triton, Nereid, Proteus, Naiad, Larissa, Galeta, Thalassa, Despina, Halimede, Neso, Psamathe, Laomedeia, and Sao are the moons of Neptune.

Composition and Structure
With the mass of 1.0243 x 1026 kg, Neptune is an intermediate body between Earth and the larger gas giants: its mass is 17 times that of Earth but just 1/19th that of Jupiter. Its surface gravity is surpassed only by Jupiter. Neptune’s equatorial radius of 24,764 km is nearly four times that of Earth. Neptune and Uranus are considered subclass of gas giants termed “ice giants”, due to similar size and higher concentrations of volatiles relative to Jupiter and Saturn. In the search for extra- solar planets Neptune has been used as metonym: discovered in bodies of similar mass are often referred to as “Neptune’s”, just as an astronomers refer to various extra-solar bodies as “Jupiter’s”.

Atmosphere
Neptune’s atmosphere is made of 80% hydrogen and 19% helium. A trace amount of methane is also present. Prominent absorption bands of methane occur at wavelengths above 600nm, in the red and infrared portion of the spectrum. As the Uranus, this absorption of the red light by the atmospheric methane is part of what gives Neptune its blue hue, although Neptune’s vivid azure differs from Uranus’s milder cyan. Since Neptune’s atmospheric methane content is similar to that of Uranus, some unknown atmospheric constituent is thought to contribute to Neptune’s color. Models suggest that Neptune’s troposphere is banded by clouds of varying compositions depending on altitude. The upper-level clouds occur at pressure below one bar, where the temperature is suitable for methane to condense. For pressure between one and five bars [100 and 500 kPa}, clouds of ammonia and hydrogen sulfide are believed to form.