/W. M. Keck Observatory The images were captured from 1994 to 2022 from Maunakea, Hawaii through the W. M. Keck Observatory and from space via NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. Each year Neptune's cloud coverage became less and less - then a photo from 2020 shows the planet almost completely cloudless, per an analysis reported by the W. M. Keck Observatory . Researchers have studied the images since they were first taken in 1994 to get a better understanding of Neptune's climate and have now come up with enough information to make an estimation. 'Even four years later, the images we took this past June showed the clouds haven't returned to their former levels,' said Erandi Chavez, a graduate student at Harvard University's Center for Astrophysics who led the study when she was an undergraduate astronomy student at UC Berkeley, per the report. 'This is extremely exciting and unexpected, especially since Neptune's previous period of low cloud activity was not nearly as dramatic and prolonged.' It is believed that this is driven by a process that we don't fully understand – proving it has a complicated and dynamic atmosphere . But it has led the team of researchers to believe that Neptune's cloud coverage must have some correlation with an 11-year solar cycle with the sun. This is shocking and unexpected because Neptune is the farthest from th){kind=link}
THE clouds on Neptune have almost completely disappeared for the first time in about three decades helping researchers better understand its overall climate.
Neptune was first recognized to have a healthy amount of clouds scattered across the planet, but images over the past several years show that they have seemed to slowly vanish.
The images were captured from 1994 to 2022 from Maunakea, Hawaii through the W. M. Keck Observatory and from space via NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope.
Each year Neptune’s cloud coverage became less and less – then a photo from 2020 shows the planet almost completely cloudless, per an analysis reported by the W. M. Keck Observatory.
Researchers have studied the images since they were first taken in 1994 to get a better understanding of Neptune’s climate and have now come up with enough information to make an estimation.