NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope (HST) has obtained images of a 3000 mile wide “dark vortex” floating around the atmosphere of Neptune. It is the first time this century that NASA scientists have observed the high pressure weather system on the furthest planet from the sun in our solar system. Nerdist reports: “Dark vortices coast through the atmosphere like huge, lens-shaped gaseous mountains,” said UC-Berkeley research astronomer Mike Wong, who headed the OPAL (Hubble’s Outer Planet Atmospheres Legacy) team that analyzed the Hubble data. “And the companion clouds are similar to so-called organic clouds that appear as pancake-shaped features lingering over mountains on Earth.” The storm itself, though, is unlike anything we’ve ever experienced on Earth—at least in documented history. Neptune’s “maelstrom” is 3,000 miles across. Imagine a horrific weather system stretching across the entire contiguous United States. That’d be a major bummer. Evidence of the vortices was first noted in 2015 when astronomers observed bright clouds on our distant planetary neighbor. Said clouds are formed when Neptune’s airflow is disturbed and forced upward, creating the vortex. That gas freezes into methane crystals at high altitudes and forms clouds. Both Hubble and Voyager 2 have observed similar phenomena in the past, but this is [...]
