[ad_1]
A dark storm over Neptune abruptly changed direction and began to drift away from almost certain death, confusing astronomers.
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope first spotted the vortex in 2018. A year later, the storm began to drift south toward Neptune’s equator, following the path of several storms before it. Usually these dark spots on Neptune live for a few years before fading or fading away. However, the storm mysteriously stopped moving south and made an abrupt U-turn, drifting north. At the same time, astronomers spotted a second, smaller dark spot on the planet.
They speculate that this smaller “cousin” storm could be a piece of the original vortex that broke and moved away.
Related: Birth of the “ Great Dark Spot ” storm on Neptune seen for the first time (Photo)
“We are excited about these observations because this smaller dark fragment is potentially part of the dark spot disruption process,” said Michael H. Wong of the University of California at Berkeley in a statement from NASA. “This is a process that has never been observed. We have seen other dark spots disappear and they have disappeared, but we have never seen anything disruptive, even though it is predicted in computer simulations.”
Although Hubble has tracked similar storms over Neptune for the past 30 years, astronomers have never seen such unpredictable atmospheric behavior.
The current storm, which measures 7,403 kilometers in diameter (larger than the Atlantic Ocean) is the fourth darkest point Hubble has tracked since 1993. These storms are high pressure systems that rotate clockwise. ‘a watch due to the planet’s rotation (unlike hurricanes on Earth, which are low pressure systems that rotate counterclockwise).
Typically, when storms drift toward Neptune’s equator, the Coriolis effect that generally keeps them stable begins to weaken and the storm disintegrates. However, unlike storms observed in the past and computer simulations which show storms following a more or less rectilinear path towards the equator, this last vortex has not migrated into this “zone of destruction”.
“It was really exciting to see this one act like he’s supposed to act and then all of a sudden he stops and goes back,” Wong said in the same NASA statement. “It was surprising.
Spotting a smaller storm that potentially broke away from the larger vortex was also surprising. Astronomers unofficially call the smaller storm “dark spot jr”. This “jr.” is still quite large, spanning 3,900 miles (6,276 km). Although researchers cannot prove that the smaller storm broke away from the larger one, Wong said it was possible that the loss of this fragment was enough to prevent the larger storm from continuing towards the equator. .
This latest giant storm over Neptune is the best-studied to date on the planet. For example, when Hubble first spotted the storm in 2018, the telescope saw bright companion clouds around the vortex. Those clouds are now gone, having disappeared when the storm stopped drifting south. It is possible that the absence of these clouds will reveal secrets about the evolution of dark spots.
There is still a lot of mystery surrounding the storms on Neptune, but NASA’s Outer Planet Atmospheres Legacy (OPAL) program is ready to unravel those mysteries. But, for now, astronomers will keep their eyes on this mysterious dark spot of Neptune.
Follow Kasandra Brabaw on Twitter @KassieBrabaw. follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
[ad_2]
Source link