This was reported by Ukrinform with reference to the website of the European Southern Observatory (ESO).

Neptune’s atmosphere features a large dark region next to a smaller bright spot that appears unexpectedly. Spots are common on giant planets, the most famous of which is Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, but this is the first time such a spot has been spotted on Neptune with a telescope from Earth.

These spots on the blue background of Neptune’s atmosphere are a mystery to astronomers, who hope the new discovery will help them understand what’s causing them.

The dark spot on Neptune was first discovered by NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft in 1989 and disappeared a few years later.

“Since the first discovery of the dark spot, I’ve always wondered what these ephemeral and elusive dark spots are,” says Patrick Irwin, a professor at the University of Oxford in England and lead author of the study. Nature Astronomy.

Irwin and his team used VLT data to rule out the possibility that the dark spots were caused by “clearing” clouds. Instead, the new observations suggest that the dark spots are most likely the result of darkening air particles in a layer below the main visible fog layer, as a mixture of ice and haze in Neptune’s atmosphere.

This conclusion was not easy to come to, because the dark spots were not permanent features of Neptune’s atmosphere, and astronomers had never before been able to study them in sufficient detail. This possibility emerged after the Hubble Space Telescope discovered several dark spots in Neptune’s atmosphere, including one in the planet’s northern hemisphere, first seen in 2018. Irwin and his team immediately began studying it from Earth, using an instrument ideal for these difficult observations.

Using the Multi Unit Spectrscope Explorer (MUSE) instrument on the VLT, the researchers were able to separate the sunlight reflected from Neptune and its sunspots into color or wavelength components and obtain a 3-D spectrum. This meant they could study the area in more detail than was previously possible.

Because different wavelengths probe different depths in Neptune’s atmosphere, having the spectrum allowed astronomers to better determine the height at which the dark spot was located in the planet’s atmosphere. The spectrum also provided information on the chemical composition of the different layers of the atmosphere, which gave the team insight into why the spot appears dark.

The observations also led to an unexpected result.

“In the process, we discovered a rare kind of deep, bright cloud that has never been identified before, even from space,” says study co-author Michael Wong, a researcher at the University of California, Berkeley.

This rare type of cloud appeared as a bright spot next to a larger main dark spot. The VLT data showed that the new “deep bright cloud” was level with the main dark spot in the atmosphere. This means it’s an entirely new type of object compared to the small “companion” clouds of high-altitude methane ice previously observed.

With ESO’s VLT, astronomers can now study objects similar to these points from Earth.

“This is an extraordinary increase in humanity’s ability to observe space. At first we could only detect these points by sending a Voyager-type spacecraft there. Later, with Hubble, we were able to distinguish them from afar. Eventually, technology advanced enough to make this possible.” From Earth.” , – points out Wong.

As reported by Ukrinform, NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb space telescope He took a new photo of the giant galaxy cluster El Gordo.