11/18/2023 0 Comments Neptunes 2![]() Irwin’s team has identified two explanations for why this is the case.Ī natural light view of Neptune and its dark spot NDS-2018 (top-right) as seen by the Very Large Telescope. MUSE’s observations showed the dark spot likely lies at a depth where the pressure is about 5 bar, which is the pressure layer where hydrogen sulfide is able to condense out into ice crystals. ![]() Instead, the team reasoned, something in the atmosphere's aerosol haze must be making this spot dark. These observations, made in 2019, thus rule out the possibility that the dark spot is simply a clearing in Neptune’s clouds providing a view of darker layers situated below. The dark spot, designated NDS-2018, appeared to fall within a region of the atmosphere that doesn’t reflect much of that light. Using MUSE, Irwin’s team created a three-dimensional reflection spectrum, which showed how the planet's atmosphere at varying depths reflects sunlight. "Since the first discovery of a dark spot, I’ve always wondered what these short-lived and elusive dark features are," Irwin said in the statement.ĭifferent wavelengths of light are able to probe different depths of Neptune’s atmosphere, dictated by things like atmospheric composition and how that composition reflects light. They published a paper on their findings on Thursday (Aug. In doing so, they discovered some possible answers as to the dark spot’s mysterious origin. ![]() Neptune’s dark spots had never been observed by a ground-based telescope before, but with the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile and its MUSE (Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer) instrument, Irwin’s team was able to detect the dark spot and spectroscopically measure it in 3D, revealing what was going on with this entity at different atmospheric depths.
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