Weather changes on Uranus and Neptune

~1 min

NASA's scientists have recently received incredible images of the most understudied outer planets in the Solar System. The latest view of these distant ice giants showed some new unusual aspects in the atmosphere of both planets, which, apparently, is closely related to the local seasonal process and weather cycles.

During its regular checking of the weather, Hubble Space Telescope captured inexplicable dark vortex on the top of Neptune but nobody definitely knows how it was formed. Either these dark spots appear every 4-6 years and disappear quickly or they are reminiscent of Jupiter's Red Great Spot, with deep-layered inner elements being swirled by the dark storm and lifted upwards through the Neptune's atmosphere in an anticyclonic direction.

To the right of the dark spot, you can also notice pancake-shaped clouds. Such features are similar to airy clouds which usually formed upward over mountains on Earth. There is no solid surface or water-rich hydrosphere, and it seems to be ice methane clouds caused by frozen gases rapidly pushed upward.

On the picture, it will be hard to overlook the massive white storm cap crossing the north pole of Uranus. There is an assumption that the emergence of such features connected with seasonal changes in atmospheric flow. Anyway, without regular long-term monitoring, we even can’t clearly define not only atmospheric tendencies of such cold and distant planets but also of Earth.

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