Hubble Space Telescope imagery Neptune has revealed that the planet's clouds are disappearing.
Credit: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Credit: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
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TechTranscript
00:00Recent observations from the Hubble Space Telescope show that Neptune's clouds are
00:05almost completely disappearing.
00:08Astronomers report that their continual monitoring of Neptune's weather uncovered a link between
00:14its shifting cloud abundance and the 11-year solar cycle in which the Sun's entangled magnetic
00:20fields drive solar activity.
00:23When activity on the Sun increases, more intense ultraviolet radiation floods the solar system.
00:29Astronomers found that two years after the solar cycle's peak, the number of clouds
00:35on Neptune increases.
00:37The link between Neptune and the Sun's activity is surprising to planetary astronomers because
00:42Neptune is the outermost major planet, where sunlight is 1,900th the intensity Earth receives.
00:50To monitor the evolution of Neptune's appearance, astronomers analyzed Hubble Space Telescope
00:56archival observations beginning in 1994, Keck Observatory images taken from 1994 to 2022,
01:05and Lick Observatory data from 2018 to 2019.
01:10The combined data will enable further investigations into the physics and chemistry that lead to
01:16Neptune's dynamic appearance, which in turn may help deepen astronomers' understanding,
01:22not only of Neptune, but also of planets beyond our solar system.