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Meet our neighbours: Neptune

Created: 2026-10-09

Author(s):
Lina Canas

The eight and most distant planet in the solar system, Neptune. To discover this far and misterious world, let's build a tactile version using cheap, household items. Just like the other activities of the "Meet our Neighbours" series, the tactile Neptune will be a great resource to explore a planet for both visually impaired and normal vision students.

NOTE: The "Meet our neighbours!" project is published in AstroEDU in this activity Collection. It was produced by NUCLIO and Europlanet and supported by Galileo Teaching Training Program and GalileoMobile. You can find more information at this Link

Materials

For each group bulding a tactile Neptune:

Copies of the attached PDF files (two copies of Tactile_Neptune.pdf and one copy of Tactile_Neptune_Mold.pdf)
thick fabric in dark blue
thin fabric in light blue
sand (rings)
this wire
cotton
sand
glue and scissors

NOTE: These materials are only suggestions; all textures can be replaced by other local, easy to find, low-cost materials.

Goals

To explore planet Neptune through a tactile hands-on experience for visually impaired students and their non-visually impaired peers.

Learning Objectives

Students will explore and learn the characteristics of Neptune using the tactile model: its active atmosphere, the clouds and its rings.

Background

Neptune is the eight and most distant planet in the solar system. Its distance from the Sun is 4.5 million kilometers, or 30 times the distance between the Sun and Earth, and it takes 164.8 years to complete its orbit. It is slightly smaller than Uranus, with a diameter of 48,000 km (3.8 times that of Earth) and its mass is 17.2 times that of Earth.

Like Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus, it is a giant gaseous planet mainly composed of hydrogen and helium, but like Uranus, it has a larger proportion of heavier constituents such as ammonia, methane, and water.

The discovery
The discovery of Neptune in 1846 is the result of a prediction made by the French astronomer Urbain Le Verrier, based on his calculations, to explain the observed irregularities of Uranus’s motion along its orbit. It is considered one of the major successes of fundamental astronomy, the study of the motion of celestial objects.

An active atmosphere
Despite its cold temperature, on average -160°C, the atmosphere shows a surprisingly active meteorological activity. In the southern hemisphere, regions of convective motion (warm air moving upward) appear with a slightly fainter blue colour (materialized in the tactile image by the fabric strip of different texture). The south pole itself seems to be a region of strong convective activity, allowing methane gas coming from the interior to reach the upper atmosphere despite the very cold temperature.
During its encounter with the planet in 1989, the Voyager 2 spacecraft discovered several dark spots (materialized by the twisted wires on the tactile image) ; they are storms similar to the Great Red Spot on Jupiter, but without any coloration. There are also a few white clouds floating high up in the atmosphere (materialized by the clumps of cotton on the tactile image). These clouds are composed of methane, a gas that freezes when the temperature is below -180°C.

A blue planet with rings
Because the upper atmosphere is relatively clear of clouds and haze particles, it has a blue colour characteristic of clear skies on Earth. Also, one of the properties of methane gas is to absorb red light, so the blue light strongly dominates in visible images of the planet.
Like all three other giant planets, Neptune has a system of rings (materialized by the glued-on sand on the tactile image). The three main rings, and like Uranus’s rings, they are very dark and tenuous, and, therefore, cannot be easily observed with most instruments from Earth.
Neptune is surrounded by 13 natural satellites, the largest of them Triton.

Image: A picture of Neptune produced from images taken by NASA’s Voyager 2 in the summer of 1989 as it became the first spacecraft to fly by the planet. Image Credit: NASA/JPL

Full Description

Prior to the activity

Print two copies of Tactile_Neptune.pdf and one copy of Tactile_Neptune_mold.pdf for each group, and prepare the materials listed above.
Ask students what they know about Neptune, introducing it as a gas giant not visible with naked eye . Tell students they will be making models of the planet to investigate its different features.

During the activity

Gather the children in groups of 5 elements – visually impaired and non-visually impaired (ideally three non-visually impaired to 2 visually impaired);
Distribute materials accordingly;
Close supervision is important. Follow each group and explain each of the tactile elements and their correspondence to each object feature.
Understand the different needs of each group of students to promote interaction between the students during the building of the tactile image – visually impaired students need to be familiarized with the different materials involved.
Give enough time to follow instructions and build the tactile image.

Build the tactile Neptune

Step 1
Cut the round shaped mold of the outer area of the planet;

Step2
Place it on top of the fabric and with a pen outline this shape;

Step 3
Cut the fabric accordingly to the area outlined;

Step 4
Place abundant glue on the Neptune_Image that corresponds to the cut area and place the fabric on top of the glue;

Step 5
Cut the section 1 on Neptune_Mold (use the numbered section only);

Step 6
Place the cut shape on top of the fabric and with a pen outline this shape;

Step 7
Glue the section on top of the glued fabric accordingly;

Step 8
Curl the plastic wire until it has the same size of round shape and glue it on top of the denoted round sections;

Step 9
Place the glue on top of the dark area denoting the ring and place the sand on top of the glue;

Wait for the image to dry. This may take a while.

Step 10
Glue the cotton on top of the denoted curved sections;

Wait for the image to dry. It might take a while before you can explore the image.

Exploring the tactile Neptune

There are several ways in which you can explore the scientific content of the tactile schematic images. If you’re presenting the final tactile image to the students, first let them explore and feel the different textures. Questions will arise as the students explore; encourage them to write their questions down and share them with the other groups. Read “Background Information” to understand the different features present in Neptune's schematic tactile image, and share with the students as they ask about them, or (if you have more time), prompt each group to choose a feature to learn more about and then have them present to the other groups in the class.

In the image above, you can identify the following features:

(1) The thick blue fabric represents the atmosphere;
(2) The strips of different texture represent the zones of covective motion of the atmosphere that appear in the southern hemisphere;
(3) The wire represent one of the dark spots, storms similar to the Great Red Spot on Jupiter;
(4) The clumps of cotton represent the white clouds of methane floating high up in the atmosphere;
(5) The rings are represented by the glued sand.