Neptune's Clouds Are Vanishing - Hubble Space Telescope Reveals - video Dailymotion

Hubble Space Telescope imagery Neptune has revealed that the planet's clouds are disappearing.  Credit: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

Transcript

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.