Astronomers Capture Surprising Changes in Neptune's Temperatures
upstart writes:
Astronomers capture surprising changes in Neptune's temperatures:
An international team of astronomers have used ground-based telescopes, including the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (ESO's VLT), to track Neptune's atmospheric temperatures over a 17-year period. They found a surprising drop in Neptune's global temperatures followed by a dramatic warming at its south pole.
[...] Like Earth, Neptune experiences seasons as it orbits the Sun. However, a Neptune season lasts around 40 years, with one Neptune year lasting 165 Earth years. It has been summertime in Neptune's southern hemisphere since 2005, and the astronomers were eager to see how temperatures were changing following the southern summer solstice.
Astronomers looked at nearly 100 thermal-infrared images of Neptune, captured over a 17-year period, to piece together overall trends in the planet's temperature in greater detail than ever before.
[...] Because Neptune's temperature variations were so unexpected, the astronomers do not know yet what could have caused them. They could be due to changes in Neptune's stratospheric chemistry, or random weather patterns, or even the solar cycle. More observations will be needed over the coming years to explore the reasons for these fluctuations. Future ground-based telescopes like ESO's Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) could observe temperature changes like these in greater detail, while the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope will provide unprecedented new maps of the chemistry and temperature in Neptune's atmosphere.
Journal Reference:
Michael T. Roman, et.al., Subseasonal Variation in Neptune's Mid-infrared Emission - IOPscience, The Planetary Science Journal (DOI: 10.3847/PSJ/ac5aa4)
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