Clouds on Neptune (Ethan Chappel)

Contains: Solar system body or event

Clouds on Neptune

Acquisition type: Lucky imaging

Clouds on Neptune

Acquisition type: Lucky imaging

The weather forecast calls for a chance of increasingly cloudy skies... on Neptune.

While imaging Neptune on September 7th I saw hints of what appeared to be a bright spot stretched across the southern hemisphere rotating into view. What was intended to be a one hour session with this cold and distant planet doubled in length to make sure it was a real feature. These spots are bright clouds, which were recently the subject of an interesting research paper.

It was already known from decades of observations that Neptune's brightness varies by as much as 10% in tandem with the Sun's activity cycle, the same one causing sunspot counts to rise and fall over 11 years. However, there were not enough detailed observations to start working out causes until recently. Three decades of images from professional observatories have pointed to changes in the amount of bright clouds as a possible reason, with more clouds being visible near solar maximum and less at minimum. However, the data spanning only 2.5 solar cycles means more time will be needed to confirm this as true or if more factors are involved.

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Clouds on Neptune

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