Neptune's Weird Dark Spot Just Got Weirder (nytimes.com) 24
Neptune boasts some of the strangest weather in the solar system. The sun's eighth planet holds the record for the fastest winds observed on any world, with speeds cutting through the atmosphere upward of 1,100 miles per hour, or 1.5 times the speed of sound. Scientists still don't know exactly why its atmosphere is so tumultuous. Their latest glimpse of Neptune provided even more reason to be confused. From a report: The Hubble Space Telescope identified a storm in 2018, a dark spot some 4,600 miles across. Since that time, it appears to have drifted toward the equator but then swooped back up north, according to the latest Hubble observations. It also has a smaller companion storm, nicknamed Dark Spot Jr., that scientists think might be a chunk that broke off the main storm. These inky vortexes stand out against the dizzying cerulean blue of the planet, but while they're dazzling to see, their life spans are short, making them even more challenging to study.
This is not the first time Neptune's dark spots have behaved so strangely. When the Voyager 2 spacecraft flew past the planet in 1989, (still the only spacecraft to do so) it observed two storms. One was the original Dark Spot, a large vortex about the size of the Earth. It too had a companion, a smaller, fast moving storm nicknamed Scooter. The first observed Dark Spot also seemed to move south and then back to the north. "When we were tracking the great dark spot with Voyager, we saw it oscillating up and down in longitude," said Heidi Hammel, a member of the imaging team of the Voyager 2 space probe and currently the vice president for science at the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy. "We had enough time on Voyager, that we were able to track the feature for something like four to five months leading up to the flyby. That storm was huge, a big monster," as big as planet Earth.
This is not the first time Neptune's dark spots have behaved so strangely. When the Voyager 2 spacecraft flew past the planet in 1989, (still the only spacecraft to do so) it observed two storms. One was the original Dark Spot, a large vortex about the size of the Earth. It too had a companion, a smaller, fast moving storm nicknamed Scooter. The first observed Dark Spot also seemed to move south and then back to the north. "When we were tracking the great dark spot with Voyager, we saw it oscillating up and down in longitude," said Heidi Hammel, a member of the imaging team of the Voyager 2 space probe and currently the vice president for science at the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy. "We had enough time on Voyager, that we were able to track the feature for something like four to five months leading up to the flyby. That storm was huge, a big monster," as big as planet Earth.
Spot names (Score:5, Funny)
A hole in the data? (Score:2)
The rumor is NASA suppressed news of dark spots on Uranus to avoid a flood of jokes. "Oh darn, hard-drive crash."
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"Dark Spot"? "Dark Spot Jr."?? "Scooter"???
Clearly the Hubble team have a hard time coming up with original sounding names for these spots.
Remember, these are the same people who suck at naming telescopes.
31 years ago (Score:5, Informative)
NYT Paywall / login crap (Score:5, Informative)
Please stop linking walled gardens.
https://www.space.com/neptune-... [space.com]
A bit more about Neptune (Astrum):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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An orbiter is due (Score:4, Interesting)
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NASA has a proposed mission to Titan [nasa.gov] on the books at the moment, though I still don't see anything about a permanent or at least long-term orbiter. As with you, I do hope the less expensive heavy lift capable launch vehicles sees more missions to all the outer planets.
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And I mixed up my moons and planets again. Pre-caffeine I thought Titan was a Neptune moon. Forgive me.
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Maybe you were thinking of Triton.
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Dark spots that get weird (Score:4, Funny)
Can't find it Re: Dark spots that get weird (Score:2)
I got this one (Score:2)
It's aliens. They're running an ammonia-based air con in reverse, which is why it's so hot on Neptune.
All downhill after Carl Sagan left us. (Score:2, Insightful)
...upward of 1,100 miles per hour, or 1.5 times the speed of sound.
upward of 1,100 miles per hour, or 1.5 times the speed of sound (on Earth (at sea level (at a standardized temperature and atmospheric pressure (on a good day.))))
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Yeah, I noticed that too. I wonder what the atmospheric pressure is at the level of those winds, and what the speed of sound is at that pressure/ temperature? (And maybe the composition affects the speed of sound? Mostly hydrogen and helium higher up, but more methane at lower altitudes, plus other gasses.
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Mod parent up! The speed of sound is not a fixed number - it's a function of temperature, specific gas constant, and specific heats. It's bad enough when people pretend the speed of sound is constant in Earth's atmosphere, but projecting that to other planets is just silly.
Then again, I haven't done the math and it could coincidentally be the same, but that seems very unlikely.
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Yeah, it's sloppy tabloid reporting, like the dark side of the moon. I wonder if they do that on purpose to make it more eye catching to a specific audience.
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Some interesting and nonintuitive things related to sound propagation and SONAR. https://youtu.be/AqqaYs7LjlM [youtu.be]
Longitude? (Score:2)
"The first observed Dark Spot also seemed to move south and then back to the north. 'When we were tracking the great dark spot with Voyager, we saw it oscillating up and down in longitude.'" Moving north and south would be changing in latitude, not longitude. It's not even clear what longitude means on Neptune, in the absence of hard rock (or hard ice).
speed of sound? (Score:2)
Wha? The speed of sound depends on at least temperature, not to mention pressure and density. Do they mean speed of sound on earth at the surface, or the actual speed of sound in Neptune's atmosphere?
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I'm guessing the authors were referring to the speed of sound at sea level on Earth, and just assumed it was the same everywhere. Never underestimate the stupidity of journalists writing about science.