NASA scientists have interrupted the checkout and calibration of the Hubble Space Telescope to aim the recently refurbished observatory at a new expanding spot on the giant planet Jupiter. The spot, caused by the impact of a comet or an asteroid, is changing day to day in the planet's cloud tops. For the past several days the world's largest telescopes have been trained on Jupiter. Not to miss any detail of the potentially new science in the unfolding drama 360 million miles away. The Hubble picture, taken on July 23, is the sharpest visible-light picture taken of the impact feature. The observations were made with Hubble's new camera, the Wide Field Camera 3. Discovered by Australian amateur astronomer Anthony Wesley on Sunday, July 19, the spot was created when a small object plunged into Jupiter's atmosphere and disintegrated. The only other time in history such a feature has been seen on Jupiter was 15 years ago. This is strikingly similar to the comet Shoemaker Levy 9 that impacted Jupiter in July 1994. It is believed that impacts of this magnitude are rare so we are very fortunate to see it with Hubble, also the details seen in the Hubble view shows a lumpiness to the debris plume caused by turbulence in Jupiter's atmosphere. The spot is presently twice the length of the United States. Simon-Miller of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center estimated that the diameter of the object that slammed into Jupiter was at least the size of several football fields. The force of the explosion on Jupiter was thousands of times more powerful than the suspected comet or asteroid that exploded over the Tunguska River Valley in Siberia in June 1908. The WFC3, installed by the STS-125 astronauts in May, is not yet fully calibrated. So while it is possible to obtain celestial images, the camera's full power cannot yet be realized for most observations. The WFC3 can still return meaningful science images that will complement the Jupiter pictures being taken with ground-based telescopes. This is a natural color image of Jupiter as seen in visible light.
This is Uranus' sister planet and it is 3 billion miles away from the sun. After the exclusion Neptune is now the outer most planet in our solar system
It was named for the Roman god of the seas
Its 2.68 Million miles from Earth
Its Diameter is 30,775 miles
Its takes 168.4 Earth years to orbit the Sun
I Day on Neptune is 16.1 Earth Hours Long
Like all other outer planets Neptune rotates much faster than the Earth and this fast rotation helps create the violent wind speeds. Neptune has the fastest winds in our solar system, its great dark spot which surfaces and disappears without warning with winds up to 1000 miles an hour averaging at about 750 miles an hour raging in the upper atmosphere. Scientists do not know why winds on Neptune blow 2 to 3 times faster than on the gas giants like Jupiter and its great red spot, an energy source to heat the air is a key factor in wind creation, on Earth that source is the Sun, but Neptune which is 30 times further away from the Sun than the Earth and gets one 900th as much solar energy which is not enough to power Neptune's colossal winds so scientists believe that Neptune gets additional power from within. Measurements taken by Voyager 2 showed that Neptune radiated twice as much heat from its interior as it gets from the Sun which is the highest rate of heat out flow to in flow of any planet in our solar system, but why the interior of Neptune generates that much heat is still eluding scientists. This internal heat also explains the convection of the gas in Neptune's atmosphere that leads to fascinating cloud patterns varying from bright white to featureless blue, it also contributes to the band formation of the coulds around the planet.
** Bright blue clouds that surround the planet Neptune consist mainly of frozen methane. Winds that carry these clouds may reach speeds up to 700 miles per hour. Image credit: NASA/JPL**
In 1989 Voyager 2 snapped a picture of Neptune that showed a huge storm, s great dark spot in its southern hemisphere stretching 8000 miles across, the storm resembled Jupiter's great red spot, 5 years after the dark spot was discovered when the Hubble telescope was aimed back to Neptune the dark spot was gone but this didn't mean that that was the end of violent storms on Neptune, astronomers discovered another dark spot but this time it was on the northern hemisphere. The dark spot storms on Neptune come and go on a shorter time scale than red spot storms on Jupiter that had been raging for over 300 years. The storm systems on Neptune are transient and eccentric, scientists observed the dark spot storms on Neptune and found that the oscillated a few thousand miles within a span of about 8 days. The disappearance, reappearance and overall erratic movement of these storm systems manes Neptune's storm system the most unpredictable in our solar system.
Similar to Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus, Neptune also has a complex system of moons, 13 discovered so far. Scientists believe that some of Neptune's moons may have originally formed form elsewhere in the solar system and have been captured by Neptune. Beyond the orbit of Neptune and Pluto is stacked full of materials, small icy bodies, rocky bodies and other debris which every so often will collide with each other and get pushed into the solar system, some of these materials that have been pushed in ends up as comets but if these materials are pushed in the right direction and at the right time they can be captured by the planets gravitational pull becoming a moon. Also like the other outer planets excepting Jupiter, Neptune also has a dim ring system.
** In Neptune's outermost ring, 39,000 miles (63,000 kilometres) from the planet, material mysteriously clumps into three bright, dense arcs. Image credit: NASA**
Neptune's largest moon Triton is about the size of the Earth's moon, it is the coldest object in our solar system ever observed by astronomers even more frigid than Pluto. Averaging a temperature of -350°F which is so cold that the Nitrogen which will normally be a gas is an icy polar ice cap on this moon. It is so cold mainly because the surface is so reflective, about 70% of the sunlight that reaches it is reflected back and that much light not being absorbed by the moon means it gets very very cold.
**The icy crust of Triton, Neptune's largest satellite, has ridges and valleys that were revealed in photographs taken by the U.S. space probe Voyager 2. Image credit: NASA/JPL**
