The storm has a distance of 4,600 miles – wider than the Atlantic Ocean – and formed in the northern hemisphere of Neptune. Hubble tracked the storm since its discovery more than two years ago, and astronomers tracked the storm by taking a stay south near the planet’s equator.
This is essentially the killing area, where the storms go to die on Neptune and disappear without a trace.
The whirlwind changed unexpectedly again to the north, However, returning to its point of origin in August 2020.
Neptune had four storms – including this one – called dark spots (such as the Great Red Spot on Jupiter), observed by Hubble over the years. Storms follow a similar pattern of occurrence and disappearance over two years.
Voyager 2 also spotted two dark storms on Neptune during the 1989 flight of the planet – but they disappeared long before Hubble could see them after their launch in 1993.
What makes this whirlwind storm an obstacle is that astronomers have never seen a storm on Neptune back.
Researchers also believe that the storm actually threw a fragment of itself into this process. Hubble in January saw a smaller dark spot called the “dark spot jr.” That appeared next to the larger dark spot. (Yes, everything is in lower case).
The smaller dark spot was probably once part of the massive storm that broke out and remained nearby before it receded and disappeared.
The Hubble image was released on Tuesday and presented at the American Geophysical Union meeting in the fall of 2020, which was practically due to the pandemic.
“We are excited about these observations because this smaller dark fragment is part of the process of breaking the dark spot,” said Michael H. Wong, a planetary scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, in a statement.
“This is a process that has never been noticed. I have seen other dark spots fade and disappear, but I have never seen anything disturbing, even if it is predicted in computer simulations.”
Looking at the weather on 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 is a dark, frozen world with an average temperature of 392 degrees Fahrenheit negative and screaming winds that send frozen methane clouds to the planet at 1,200 miles per hour.
It is the farthest planet in our solar system, about 30 times the father of the Sun than Earth – and this distance makes lunch on Neptune look like dusk on Earth.
The Great Dark Spot on Neptune, witnessed by Voyager 2, was so large that it could contain the Earth.
Researchers do not understand much about how these massive storms form, but they have managed to study this dark spot in more detail than previous storms.
These storms on Neptune behave differently from hurricanes on Earth. Dark spots are high-pressure systems that start stably and rotate clockwise, while hurricanes on Earth are low-pressure systems that rotate counterclockwise.
But this stability breaks down as storms approach Neptune’s equator – except for the latest dark spot.
“It was really interesting to see him act the way he should and then suddenly he stops and turns back,” Wong said. – It was surprising.
When this reversal occurred, the dark spot jr. it appeared. This fragment was still quite large, 3,900 miles wide.
However, the timing of the smaller spot was unusual.
“When I first saw the small place, I thought the biggest one was broken,” Wong said. “I didn’t think a whirlwind was forming, because the little one is further to the equator. So it’s in this unstable region. But we can’t prove that the two are connected. It remains a complete mystery.
“Also in January, the dark vortex stopped moving and began moving north again,” Wong added. “Perhaps throwing that fragment away was enough to prevent him from moving to the equator.”
While the dark spot jr. disappeared, researchers are looking for possible survivors of the smaller storm.
Hubble tracks 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 when they are closest to Earth in their orbit each year.
By comparing the 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, OPAL’s chief investigator. at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, in a statement.
“Now we can follow the great storm for years and we can follow its complete life cycle. If we didn’t have Hubble, we might think that the Great Dark Spot seen by Voyager in 1989 is still there on Neptune, just like Jupiter’s Great Red Spot. And we wouldn’t have known about the other four places Hubble discovered. ”