Do not be alarm , but a bright storm system three quarter the width of our entire planet has emerged over Neptune ’s equator , in a region where no bright cloud have ever been witnessed before .
The “ highly surprising ” observation was made by astronomers Ned Molter and Imke de Pater of the University of California Berkeley , during a test run observing Neptune at twilight at the W.M. Keck Observatory at Maunakea , Hawaii . The violent storm , which traverse roughly 5,600 mile ( 9,000 km ) , appear to get “ much bright ” between June 26th and July 2nd , according to apress releaseissued by Keck this workweek .
“ Historically , very lustrous clouds have occasionally been see on Neptune , but usually at latitudes closer to the poles , around 15 to 60 degrees N or south , ” de Pater enjoin in a statement . “ Never before has a cloud been understand at , or so close to the equator , nor has one ever been this burnished . ”
A distantice giantthat ’s only been chit-chat by a single space vehicle , Voyager 2 , the inner working of Neptune stay for the most part mysterious to world scientists , although they ’ve see some impressive meteoric activity in its azure skies over the years . The Hubble Space Telescope find a similar shiny cloud composite in 1994 , presently after a mysterious dark vortex , imaged by Voyager 2 in 1989 , had disappeared .
In 2015 , a novel black convolution clip up in Neptune ’s southern hemisphere . Scientists havebeen attempting to get across the anti - cycloneever since , snagging some beautiful images with Hubble last year . As UC Berkeley ’s Mike Wong explained in a talk I attended at the American Geophysical Union annual meeting last December , sour spot “ often have these bright companion features ” which absorb powerfully in the part of the spectrum associated with methane .
When I spoke with Wong after his talk , he secern me his team was examine to figure out why the dark vortex was freewheel to the south ( “ … it sorta threw us off — what we were looking for was for it to drift to the equator and dissipate ” ) , whether it was indeed shrinking as preliminary data suggest , and how long the feature would last . His research mathematical group was also research good example to enlighten what actually make dark-skinned spots dark .
“ The most exciting possibility is that this could indeed be link with a dark whirl , ” Wong said when I email him about the latest Neptune watching . “ We ca n’t dissolve enough detail to know , but this could be some type of wave activity connect with dark vortex . It would be great to figure something like this with an highly with child telescope … or better yet , a Neptune orbiter ! ”
De Pater and Molter also suspect the bright clouds chilling near Neptune ’s equator could be associate to gas rising up and condense out of a profoundly - rooted disconsolate maelstrom organisation . The cloud might also be an enormous convective system , exchangeable to those seen on planets like Saturn .
“ We were very surprised to get word that the storm was consistent with being right at the equator — it ’s difficult to understand how a deep vortex could be sustained there , since the Coriolis force is zero , ” Molter enounce in an electronic mail to Gizmodo . “ It could be that the rudimentary vortex is a few degrees north or southward of the equator , or that this cloud lacks an underlying whirlpool and will speedily shear aside . ”
De Pater and Molter plan to continue investigate the colossal swarm complex — they’re trust to secure more maintain time at Keck this fall . Neptune is the breezy planet in the Solar System , and studying its complex conditions can shed Christ Within on the inside works of ice giants , a club that it shares with just one other planetary oddball , Uranus . ( Unlike petrol giants , which are composed primarily of hydrogen and helium , frappe giantscontain a larger share of heavier elementslike oxygen , carbon , and nitrogen . They may even nurse hiddenliquid water oceans . )
“ Discoveries like this one underscore just how little we know about the atmospheres of the glass giants , ” Molter said .
AstronomyNeptuneScienceSpace
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