For the first time since 1994, the Hubble Space Telescope has spotted a dark vortex on Neptune.
The vortex is an area of high pressure on the planet. As this high pressure forms, it creates brighter companion clouds comprised of methane ice crystals.
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“Dark vortices coast through the atmosphere like huge, lens-shaped gaseous mountains,” said University of California at Berkeley research astronomer Mike Wong. “And the companion clouds are similar to so-called orographic clouds that appear as pancake-shaped features lingering over mountains on Earth.”
In July 2015 amateur astronomers using powerful telescopes reported spotting bright features on Neptune. It was theorized that the clouds were a result of a dark vortex that was invisible. These vortices are only visible at blue wavelengths and only Hubble has a high enough resolution to spot them.
In September, a long-term Hubble project that takes yearly images of planets photographed the dark vortex. It was spotted a second time, indicating that this is a long-lived feature on the planet.
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The vortex was officially reported on May 17, 2016 and further investigated by a team at the University of California Berkeley.
Storms in the cloud tops of planets are fairly commonplace: Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, which has lasted hundreds of years, is a perfect example. Smaller vortices on the planet come and go as well. And these storms have also been spotted on Saturn.
Neptune’s vortices exhibit a lot of variability and astronomers hope to better understand why they can vary in size, shape and why they sometimes cross latitudes and change speed.
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