Neptune Fountain & Neptune Planet, Jihlava, Czech Republic
Posted by: vraatja
N 49° 23.750 E 015° 35.423
33U E 542838 N 5471627
The centerpiece of the fountain located on main square of city Jihlava is Neptune, god of the sea and namesake of Neptune the planet.
Waymark Code: WMHZNM
Location: Kraj Vysočina, Czechia
Date Posted: 09/01/2013
Views: 60
Neptune (mythology)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
--
Neptune (Latin: Neptunus) is the god of water and the sea in Roman mythology, a brother of Jupiter and Pluto. He is analogous with but not identical to the god Poseidon of Greek mythology. The Roman conception of Neptune owed a great deal to the Etruscan god Nethuns.
For a time he was paired with Salacia, the goddess of the salt water. At an early date (899 BC) he was identified with Poseidon, when the Sibylline books ordered a lectisternium in his honour (Livy v. 13). In the earlier times it was the god Portunes or Fortunus who was thanked for naval victories, but Neptune supplanted him in this role by at least the first century BC when Sextus Pompeius called himself "son of Neptune". Neptune is associated as well with fresh water, as opposed to Oceanus, god of the world-ocean. Like Poseidon, Neptune was also worshipped by the Romans as a god of horses, under the name "Neptune Equester", patron of horse-racing.
The planet Neptune was named after the god, as its deep blue gas clouds gave early astronomers the impression of great oceans. Neptune is the eighth and farthest planet from the Sun in the Solar System. It is the fourth-largest planet by diameter and the third-largest by mass. Among the gaseous planets in the solar system, Neptune is the most dense. Neptune is 17 times the mass of Earth and is slightly more massive than its near-twin Uranus, which is 15 times the mass of Earth but not as dense. On average, Neptune orbits the Sun at a distance of 30.1 AU, approximately 30 times the Earth–Sun distance.
Cited from (
visit link) and (
visit link)