How far is Neptune from Earth right now?
Distance over the next three years
Distance between the centers of Earth and Neptune. Hover or tap the chart to read any date.
Why the distance changes
Neptune is the most distant planet, taking about 165 years to orbit the Sun. Its distance from Earth changes by roughly two Earth-Sun distances over each year, as Earth moves around its own orbit, and it is closest about once a year.
Between 2000 and 2050, Neptune is closest on October 28, 2041, at 4.31 billion km (2.68 billion miles), and farthest on January 25, 2000, at 4.65 billion km (2.89 billion miles).
Light from Neptune takes about four hours to reach us, and Neptune cannot be seen without a telescope. It was the first planet found by calculation, before anyone had spotted it.
How this is calculated
Your browser calculates the position of Neptune for the current moment from your device's clock, using the Astronomy Engine library, which is based on the VSOP87 planetary theory. We checked its Earth distances against NASA JPL data (via Astropy) for dates from 1950 to 2045: they agree to better than 0.02%. Distances are measured center to center.