{"id":2696,"date":"2019-03-26T16:36:29","date_gmt":"2019-03-26T13:36:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/energyholding.world\/?p=2696"},"modified":"2019-03-26T16:36:31","modified_gmt":"2019-03-26T13:36:31","slug":"hubble-tracks-the-lifecycle-of-giant-storms-on-neptune","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/energyholding.world\/?p=2696","title":{"rendered":"Hubble Tracks the Lifecycle of Giant Storms on Neptune"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"

This is a composite picture showing images of storms on Neptune from the Hubble Space Telescope (left) and the Voyager 2 spacecraft (right). The Hubble Wide Field Camera 3 image of Neptune, taken in Sept. and Nov. 2018, shows a new dark storm (top center). In the Voyager image, a storm known as the Great Dark Spot is seen at the center. It is about 13,000 km by 6,600 km (approximately 8,000 miles by 4,100 miles) in size — as large along its longer dimension as the Earth. The white clouds seen hovering in the vicinity of the storms are higher in altitude than the dark material.
Credits: NASA\/ESA\/GSFC\/JPL <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt was certainly a surprise,\u201d recalls Amy Simon, a planetary scientist at NASA\u2019s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland<\/a>.\n \u201cWe were used to looking at Jupiter\u2019s Great Red Spot, which presumably \nhad been there for more than a hundred years.\u201d Planetary scientists \nimmediately began constructing computer simulations in order to \nunderstand the Great Dark Spot\u2019s mysterious disappearance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now part of the Outer Planet Atmospheres Legacy (OPAL) project<\/a>,\n Simon and her colleagues are beginning to answer these questions. \nThanks to images captured by Hubble, the team has not only witnessed a \nstorm\u2019s formation for the first time but developed constraints that \npinpoint the frequency and duration of the storm systems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Birth of a Storm<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2015, the OPAL team began a yearly mission to analyze images of \nNeptune captured by Hubble and detected a small dark spot in the \nsouthern hemisphere. Each year since, Simon and her colleagues have \nviewed the planet and monitored the storm as it dissipated. In 2018, a \nnew dark spot emerged, hovering at 23 degrees north latitude.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe were so busy tracking this smaller storm from 2015, that we \nweren’t necessarily expecting to see another big one so soon,\u201d says \nSimon about the storm, which is similar in size to the Great Dark Spot. \n\u201cThat was a pleasant surprise. Every time we get new images from Hubble,\n something is different than what we expected.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What\u2019s more, the storm\u2019s birth was caught on camera. While analyzing \nHubble images of Neptune taken from 2015 to 2017, the team discovered \nthat several small, white clouds formed in the region where the most \nrecent dark spot would later appear. They published their findings March\n 25 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The high-altitude clouds are made up of methane ice crystals, which \ngive them their characteristic bright, white appearance. These companion\n clouds are thought to hover above the storms, similar to the way that \nlenticular clouds cap tall mountains on Earth. Their presence several \nyears before a new storm was spotted suggests that dark spots may \noriginate much deeper in the atmosphere than previously thought.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn the same way a terrestrial Earth satellite would watch Earth\u2019s \nweather, we observe the weather on Neptune,\u201d says Glenn Orton, a \nplanetary scientist at NASA\u2019s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, \nCalifornia, who also serves on the OPAL project. Just as hurricanes are \ntracked on Earth, Hubble\u2019s images revealed the dark spot\u2019s meandering \npath. In a span of nearly 20 hours, the storm drifted westward, moving \nslightly slower than Neptune\u2019s high-speed winds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But these Neptunian storms are different from the cyclones we see on \nEarth or Jupiter. So are the wind patterns that propel them. Similar to \nthe rails that keep errant bowling balls from bounding into the gutters,\n thin bands of wind currents on Jupiter keep the Great Red Spot on a set\n path. On Neptune, wind currents operate in much wider bands around the \nplanet, allowing storms like the Great Dark Spot to slowly drift across \nlatitudes. The storms typically hover between westward equatorial wind \njets and eastward-blowing currents in the higher latitudes before strong\n winds pull them apart.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still more observations are needed. \u201cWe want to be able to study how the winds are changing over time,\u201d says Simon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Average Lifespan?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Simon is also part of a team of scientists led by undergraduate \nstudent Andrew Hsu of the University of California, Berkeley, who \npinpointed how long these storms last and how frequently they occur.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They suspect that new storms crop up on Neptune every four to six \nyears. Each storm may last up to six years, though two-year lifespans \nwere more likely, according to findings published March 25 in the \nAstronomical Journal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A total of six storm systems have been spotted since scientists first\n set their sights on Neptune. Voyager 2 identified two storms in 1989. \nSince Hubble launched in 1990, it has viewed four more of these storms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to analyzing data collected by Hubble and Voyager 2, the \nteam ran computer simulations that charted a total of 8,000 dark spots \nswirling across the icy planet. When matched to 256 archival images, \nthese simulations revealed that Hubble likely would have spotted \napproximately 70 percent of the simulated storms that occurred over the \ncourse of a year and roughly 85 to 95 percent of storms with a two-year \nlifespan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still, Questions Swirl.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conditions on Neptune are still largely a mystery. Planetary \nscientists hope to next study changes in the shape of the vortex and \nwind speed in the storms. \u201cWe have never directly measured winds within \nNeptune’s dark vortices, but we estimate the wind speeds are in the \nballpark of 328 feet (100 meters) per second, quite similar to wind \nspeeds within Jupiter’s Great Red Spot,\u201d says Michael Wong, a planetary \nscientist at the University of California, Berkeley. More frequent \nobservations using the Hubble telescope, he notes, will help paint a \nclearer picture of how storm systems on Neptune evolve.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Simon says that discoveries on Neptune will have implications for \nthose studying exoplanets in our galaxy that are similar in size to the \nice giants. \u201cIf you study the exoplanets and you want to understand how \nthey work, you really need to understand our planets first,\u201d says Simon.\n \u201cWe have so little information on Uranus and Neptune.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All agree that these recent findings have spurred a desire to track \nour furthest major planetary neighbor in even greater detail. \u201cThe more \nyou know, the more you realize you don’t know,\u201d says Orton.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation \nbetween NASA and ESA (European Space Agency). NASA’s Goddard Space \nFlight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope. The Space \nTelescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland, conducts \nHubble science operations. STScI is operated for NASA by the Association\n of Universities for Research in Astronomy in Washington, D.C. The \nresearchers used data acquired from the Hubble Space Telescope \nassociated with the OPAL program and archived by the STScI.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/nasa.gov<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cIt was certainly a surprise,\u201d recalls Amy Simon, a planetary scientist at NASA\u2019s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. \u201cWe were used to looking at Jupiter\u2019s Great Red Spot, which presumably had been there for more than a hundred years.\u201d Planetary scientists immediately began constructing computer simulations in order to understand the Great Dark Spot\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/energyholding.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2696"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/energyholding.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/energyholding.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/energyholding.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/energyholding.world\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2696"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/energyholding.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2696\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2698,"href":"http:\/\/energyholding.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2696\/revisions\/2698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/energyholding.world\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/energyholding.world\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/energyholding.world\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}