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
00:00 Recent observations from the Hubble Space Telescope show that Neptune's clouds are almost completely disappearing.
00:08 Astronomers report that their continual monitoring of Neptune's weather
00:12 uncovered a link between its shifting cloud abundance and the 11-year solar cycle
00:18 in which the Sun's entangled magnetic fields drive solar activity.
00:23 When activity on the Sun increases, more intense ultraviolet radiation floods the solar system.
00:30 Astronomers found that two years after the solar cycle's peak, the number of clouds on Neptune increases.
00:37 The link between Neptune and the Sun's activity is surprising to planetary astronomers
00:42 because Neptune is the outermost major planet where sunlight is 1/900th the intensity Earth receives.
00:50 To monitor the evolution of Neptune's appearance, astronomers analyzed Hubble Space Telescope archival observations
00:57 beginning in 1994, Keck Observatory images taken from 1994 to 2022,
01:05 and Lick Observatory data from 2018 to 2019.
01:10 The combined data will enable further investigations into the physics and chemistry
01:16 that lead to Neptune's dynamic appearance, which in turn may help deepen astronomers' understanding
01:22 not only of Neptune, but also of planets beyond our solar system.
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