Using ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT), astronomers have observed a large dark spot in Neptune's atmosphere, with an unexpected smaller bright spot adjacent to it. This is the first time a dark spot on the planet has ever been observed with a telescope on Earth. These occasional features in the blue background of Neptune's atmosphere are a mystery to astronomers, and the new results provide further clues as to their nature and origin.
Large spots are common features in the atmospheres of giant planets, the most famous being Jupiter's Great Red Spot. On Neptune, a dark spot was first discovered by NASA's Voyager 2 in 1989, before disappearing a few years later."Since the first discovery of a dark spot, I've always wondered what these short-lived and elusive dark features are," says Patrick Irwin, Professor at the University of Oxford in the UK and lead investigator of the study.
Coming to this conclusion was no easy feat because dark spots are not permanent features of Neptune's atmosphere and astronomers had never before been able to study them in sufficient detail. The opportunity came after the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope discovered severalin Neptune's atmosphere, including one in the planet's northern hemisphere first noticed in 2018.
Using the VLT's Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer , the researchers were able to split reflected sunlight from Neptune and its spot into its component colors, or wavelengths, and obtain a 3D spectrum. This meant they could study the spot in more detail than was possible before.
The observations also offered up a surprise result."In the process we discovered a rare deep bright cloud type that had never been identified before, even from space," says study co-author Michael Wong, a researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, U.S..
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