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)
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 12 2022, @03:14AM
Robot Santa needs to be held accountable
(Score: 4, Funny) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday April 12 2022, @03:19AM (8 children)
Oh yeah, the sun's a globe too, right?
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 12 2022, @03:40AM (7 children)
It amazes me how much of an idiot you are.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 12 2022, @05:23AM
Uranus
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 12 2022, @08:41AM (1 child)
No longer amazed. Runaway has showed us all his Anus, and so we are no longer surprised at what an ignorant moron he truly is. Runaway! Not yet dead! But, for all practical porpoises, brain dead. Time is on our side.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 12 2022, @12:01PM
withe all the AGW noeone while knoe a porpise frome ae porpuse mousieur.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday April 12 2022, @04:18PM
The orbit around Neptune takes 165 years. How good were our telescopes in 1857?
The unexpected is pretty expected right now...
(Score: 3, Touché) by cmdrklarg on Tuesday April 12 2022, @04:31PM (2 children)
He may be an idiot but he's not wrong.
And we better not hope that the sun starts getting hotter. We'd *really* be fucked then.
Answer now is don't give in; aim for a new tomorrow.
(Score: 2, Flamebait) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday April 12 2022, @06:37PM (1 child)
I have some bad news for you on that front...all stars on the main sequence end up getting hotter as they live longer. As things stand, we probably have "only" 100 million to 500 million years before the sun's output boils the oceans even if there were no greenhouse gases in the atmosphere at all.
...of course, we may have scant *weeks* to live if Putin decides to go full nihilist, so there's that.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 3, Touché) by cmdrklarg on Wednesday April 13 2022, @01:41PM
Heh, of course I know that... that scenario is so far in the future that it's nothing I need worry about.
I don't see it happening, and I have no control over it. If it does there isn't anything I can do about it, so I'm not going to worry about that either.
Answer now is don't give in; aim for a new tomorrow.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 12 2022, @10:39AM (2 children)
We need to divert as much money away from wars, pandemics and global warmings as is possible.
That way we will know the temperature on Neptune.
A far more important metric to the benefit of humanity!
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday April 12 2022, @04:21PM (1 child)
Don't Look Up!
Don't Look Up!
(Score: 2) by HammeredGlass on Thursday April 14 2022, @02:18PM
The movie lacking the most in self-awareness.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday April 12 2022, @08:50PM
The title made it sound like something very weird is happening on Neptune. Nope, it's probably just seasonal variation on a planet that has really long seasons that we're only now getting to see. In other words, its explanation is mundane, not exotic. But it's neat that what qualifies as mundane on Neptune is so different from what qualifies as mundane on Earth.
It's stories like this that make this an exciting time to be alive, that we might actually someday peek under the clouds of the gas giants, or discover life under the ice of Europa or that Titan has a biosphere. Thanks, Soylent.
Washington DC delenda est.