Neptune’s dark place. Credit: Hubbleseat
Astronomers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope spotted a mysterious dark vortex on Neptune, suddenly escaping potential death on a giant blue planet.
The storm, which is larger than the Atlantic Ocean, was born in the northern hemisphere of the planet and was discovered by Hubble in 2018. Observations a year later showed that it has begun to turn southward towards the equator, where such storms are visible. To the surprise of observers, Hubble doubled northward to find the direction of the vortex’s change by August 2020. Although Hubble has been exploring similar dark spots for the past 30 years, seeing this unpredictable atmospheric behavior is something new.
Surprisingly, the storm was not alone. Hubble found another small dark space in January this year that temporarily appeared near his older cousin. It may have been a giant whirlwind piece that broke, slipped away, and disappeared in subsequent observations.
“We are excited about these observations because this little dark piece is probably part of a process of disruption of dark spots,” said Michael H. Wong of the University of California, Berkeley, said Michael H. Wong of the University of California, Berkeley. “This is a process that has never been observed. We have seen some other dark spots go away and they are going away, but despite being predicted in computer simulation, we have never seen any disruption.”
The massive storm, which is about 4,600 miles away, has seen Hub’s fourth dark spot on Neptune since 1993. Two other dark storms were discovered by the Voyager 2 spacecraft in 1989 as it flew through a distant planet, but disappeared before Hubble. Can observe them. After that, only Hubble had the sharpness and sensitivity to visible light to track these elusive features, which gradually appeared and then faded over a period of about two years. Hubble unveiled the latest hurricane in September 2018.
Bad weather
Neptune’s dark orbits are high-pressure systems that form at mid-latitudes and can then migrate to the equator. They begin to remain stationary due to the Coriolis forces, which, due to the rotation of the planet, turn the storms of the Northern Hemisphere clockwise. (These hurricanes are in contrast to hurricanes on Earth, which rotate clockwise because they are low-pressure systems.) However, as hurricanes move toward the equator, the Coriolis effect weakens and the storm dissipates. In computer simulations by many different teams, these storms follow a more or less straight path toward the equator, as long as they have no Coriolis effect. Unlike simulations, the latest giant hurricane has not migrated to the equatorial “kit zone”.
“It was really exciting to watch this one act, as if he was supposed to be acting and then all of a sudden he just stops and swings back,” Wong said. “It was amazing.”
Dark Spot Jr.
Hubble observations also revealed that the surprising path of the dark vortex, in contrast, occurred at a time when a new space, informally called “Dark Spot Jr.” Appear. The latest spot was slightly smaller than his cousin, which was about 3,900 miles in circumference. It was next to the main dark spot that faces the equator – the place that some simulations show that crashes occur.
However, the timing of the emergence of the small spot was unusual. “When I first saw the small space, I felt like the big space was being disrupted,” Wong said. “I don’t think another vortex has happened because the smaller one is farther towards the equator. So it’s within this volatile field. But we can’t prove that the two are related. It’s a complete mystery.
Wong added, “It was also in January that the Dark Vortex stopped moving and started moving north again.” “Maybe throwing that piece out was enough to stop it from going to the equator.”
Researchers have continued to analyze further data to determine whether there are remnants of the dark spot Jr. The rest continued until 2020.
This Hubble Space Telescope snapshot of the dynamic blue-green planet Neptune reveals a monster dark hurricane [top center] And the emergence of a small dark spot nearby [top right]. This vortex, wider than the Atlantic Ocean, was heading south at a certain fate by atmospheric forces at the equator when it suddenly took a U-turn and flowed back to the north. Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 captured this visible-light image on January 7, 2020, at which point a small dark spot mysteriously appeared nearby. The place disappeared a few months later. The small feature may have been part of a larger storm that broke out as the larger vortex approached the equator. Huppel unveiled a massive storm in the northern hemisphere of Neptune in September 2018. The feature is around 4,600 miles. The estimated width of the small space is 3,900 miles. This is the fourth major hurricane Hubble has observed since 1993. NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft imagined two dark features in the southern hemisphere of Neptune in 1989 when Voyager flew through a distant planet. By the time Hubble looked at Neptune in 1994, those storms had disappeared. However, Hubble discovered two new dark spots in the northern hemisphere in 1994 and 1996. In the atmosphere of a gas giant their clouds can rise at a higher altitude than the surrounding regions. Neptune’s main blue color is due to the absorption of red light by the distant planet’s methane-rich atmosphere. Credit: Space Telescope Science Institute
The dark storms were still embarrassing
How these storms form is still a mystery, but this advanced giant dark vortex has been the best studied so far. The darker appearance of the storm may be due to the elevated dark cloud layer and it may also tell astronomers about the formation of the storm vert.
Another unusual feature of the dark spot is the absence of bright companion clouds around it, which were present in the Hubble images taken when the vortex was discovered in 2018. Apparently, the clouds disappeared when the vortex stopped its southward journey. Bright clouds form when the air flow is disturbed and turns upwards in a vortex, causing the gases to freeze into methane ice crystals. Researchers say the lack of clouds could reveal information about how places evolve.
Weather eye on outer planets
Hubble shattered many images of dark spots as part of the Planet Atmospheric Legacy (OPL) program, a long-term Hubble project led by Amy Simon of NASA’s Gaddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, which features annual global maps. The outer planets of our solar system when they are closest to Earth in their orbits.
The main goals of the OPL are to study long-term seasonal changes, as well as to obtain comparatively transient events such as the appearance of dark spots on Neptune or potential Uranus. These dark hurricanes may be so ephemeral that some of them may have appeared and faded over the years at Hubble’s observations of Neptune in the past. The OPL program ensures that astronomers make no other mistakes.
“If it weren’t for Hubble we wouldn’t know anything about these recent dark spots,” Simon said. “Now we can observe a huge storm over the years and see its full life cycle. If we didn’t have Hubble, then we might think that the Great Dark Spot seen by Voyager in 1989 is still on Neptune, the great red of Jupiter. Like the spot … and, we wouldn’t have known about the other four spots that Hubble discovered. “Wong will present the team’s findings on Dec. 15 at the American Geophysical Union’s autumn meeting.
Hubble gives birth to a huge storm on Neptune
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Provided by the Space Telescope Science Institute
Testimonial: The storm of darkness on Neptune is the opposite direction, probably by shedding a piece (December 16, 2020) https://phys.org/news/2020-12-dark-storm-neptune-reverses-possibly.html
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