{"id":24996,"date":"2022-04-11T05:00:57","date_gmt":"2022-04-11T09:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hobbyspace.com\/Blog\/?p=24996"},"modified":"2022-04-10T16:14:36","modified_gmt":"2022-04-10T20:14:36","slug":"24996","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hobbyspace.com\/Blog\/?p=24996","title":{"rendered":"ESO: VLT tracks surprising variations in Neptune’s temperatures"},"content":{"rendered":"

A new report from the European Southern Observatory (ESO<\/a>):<\/p>\n

ESO telescope captures surprising changes in Neptune’s temperatures<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

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This composite shows thermal images of Neptune taken between 2006 and 2020. The first three images (2006, 2009, 2018) were taken with the VISIR instrument on ESO\u2019s Very Large Telescope while the 2020 image was captured by the COMICS instrument on the Subaru Telescope (VISIR wasn\u2019t in operation in mid-late 2020 because of the pandemic). After the planet\u2019s gradual cooling, the south pole appears to have become dramatically warmer in the past few years, as shown by a bright spot at the bottom of Neptune in the images from 2018 and 2020.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

An international team of astronomers have used ground-based telescopes, including the European Southern Observatory\u2019s Very Large Telescope (ESO\u2019s VLT), to track Neptune\u2019s atmospheric temperatures over a 17-year period. They found a surprising drop in Neptune\u2019s global temperatures followed by a dramatic warming at its south pole.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis change was unexpected,\u201d<\/em> says Michael Roman, a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Leicester, UK, and lead author of the study published today in The Planetary Science Journal<\/em>. \u201cSince we have been observing Neptune during its early southern summer, we expected temperatures to be slowly growing warmer, not colder.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

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\u2019s southern hemisphere since 2005, and the astronomers were eager to see how temperatures were changing following the southern summer solstice.<\/p>\n

Astronomers looked at nearly 100 thermal-infrared images of Neptune, captured over a 17-year period, to piece together overall trends in the planet\u2019s temperature in greater detail than ever before.<\/p>\n

These data showed that, despite the onset of southern summer, most of the planet had gradually cooled over the last two decades. The globally averaged temperature of Neptune dropped by 8 \u00b0C between 2003 and 2018.<\/p>\n