The storm is 4,600 miles in diameter, wider than the Atlantic Ocean, and formed in the northern hemisphere of Neptune. Hubble has been monitoring the storm since its discovery more than two years ago, and astronomers saw the storm pass a stay south near the planet’s equator.
This is essentially the death zone, where the storms died in Neptune and disappear without a trace.
The vortex changed unexpectedly again to the north, despite this, returning to its point of origin in August 2020.
Neptune has had four storms, including this one, called dark spots (such as Jupiter’s Great Red Spot), observed by Hubble over the years. Storms follow a similar pattern of appearance and disappearance over two years.
Voyager 2 also spotted two dark storms on Neptune during the 1989 planet flyover, but these disappeared long before Hubble could observe them after launch in 1993.
What makes this vortex-shaped storm a focal point is that astronomers have never seen a storm in Neptune bend.
Investigators also believe the storm wiped out a fragment of itself in the process. In January, Hubble saw a smaller dark spot, called a “dark spot jr.,” That appeared next to the larger dark spot. (Yes, everything is tiny).
The smallest dark spot was probably part of the massive storm that erupted and remained nearby before deviating and disappearing.
The Hubble image was released Tuesday and was unveiled during the fall 2020 meeting of the American Geophysical Union, which took place largely due to the pandemic.
“We are excited about these observations because this smaller dark fragment is potentially part of the dark spot disruption process,” Michael H. Wong, a planetary scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, said in a statement.
“This is a process that has never been observed. We have seen some other dark spots fade away and have disappeared, but we have never seen anything interrupted, although it is predicted in computer simulations.”
See the weather in Neptune
Images of Neptune returned by Voyager 2 and Hubble revealed that the ice giant is a bright blue, due to its atmosphere of hydrogen, helium and methane. But it’s a dark, icy world with an average temperature of 392 degrees Fahrenheit negative and winds screaming that send frozen methane clouds across the planet at 1,200 miles per hour.
It is the farthest planet from our solar system, about 30 times more father of the sun than Earth, and this distance makes Neptune’s noon appear twilight on Earth.
Neptune’s Great Dark Spot, witnessed by Voyager 2, was so large that it could hold Earth.
What researchers don’t understand much is how these massive storms form, but they were able to study this dark spot in more detail than previous storms.
These storms on Neptune behave differently than Earth’s hurricanes. Dark spots are high-pressure systems that start stable and rotate clockwise, while hurricanes on Earth are low-pressure systems that rotate counterclockwise.
But this stability is broken when storms are near the equator of Neptune, except for the last dark spot.
“It was really exciting to see him act like he’s supposed to act, and all of a sudden he just stops and backs away,” Wong said. “It was amazing.”
When this investment occurred, the dark point jr. appeared. This fragment was still quite large, measuring 3,900 miles in diameter.
However, the timing of the appearance of the smallest dot was unusual.
“When I first saw the small place, I thought the bigger one was being interrupted,” Wong said. “I didn’t think another vortex would form because the little one is further away from the equator. So it’s within that unstable region. But we can’t prove the two are related. It’s still a complete mystery.
“It was also in January that the dark vortex stopped the movement and started moving north again,” Wong added. “Perhaps dumping this fragment was enough to prevent it from moving toward the equator.”
While the dark spot jr. is gone, researchers are looking for surviving remnants of the smallest storm.
Hubble monitors the farthest planets in our solar system through its Outer Planet Atmospheres Legacy program. This long-term program observes the outer planets of our solar system as they are closer to Earth in their orbits each year.
By comparing observations of these planets year after year, scientists can track events such as storms and seasonal changes.
“We wouldn’t know anything about these last dark spots if it weren’t for Hubble,” said Amy Simon, principal investigator for the OPAL program. at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, in a statement.
“We can now follow the big storm for years and see its entire life cycle. If we didn’t have Hubble, we might think that the Great Dark Spot seen by Voyager in 1989 is still in Neptune, just like the Great Red Spot of Jupiter we would not have known of the other four points that Hubble discovered. ”