It takes place at Neptune's south pole

Mar 19, 2010 15:57 GMT  ·  By

Scientists peering over old and recent images of the gas giant Neptune, the eight planet from the Sun, were recently amazed to discover an eerily familiar pattern in the way clouds at the planet's south pole were behaving. Their analysis revealed that the region was at the moment battered by what could best be described as a hurricane, as clouds at the location appeared to be trapped in a massive vortex. The process is very likely to be going on for a few years, as even the images delivered by the Voyager spacecraft showed indications of them, Technology Review reports.

For many years, astronomers have known that something odd is taking place at Neptune's south pole. Images sent back by the Voyager spacecraft had revealed the existence of a bright spot at the location. However, since the probe was only flying by, experts had to wait until the technology to view the gas giant developed sufficiently. About three years ago, in July of 2007, they snapped a series of high-resolution infrared images of the planet's pole, using the massive 10-meter-aperture W.M. Keck II telescope, which is based on the summit of Mauna Kea, in Hawaii. The team adds that the feature was also demonstrated using other ground-based observatories, but at much lower levels of detail.

The 2007 image showed a strange event – the bright spot appeared to have divided in two, and then to form a single block again within only a few days. Since then, experts have been shifting through the data, in an attempt to determine what had happened. Their analysis was summed up yesterday, March 19, by a team of experts from the University of California in Berkeley (UCB), led by scientist Statia Luszcz-Cook. The group proposes that the formations are in fact methane clouds, which appear to be trapped inside a very powerful mixture of winds at Neptune's south pole. Their suggestion is based on the fact that similar structures were discovered on Saturn.

In this case, the NASA/ESA Cassini spacecraft, which has been orbiting the gas giant since 2004, sent back detailed information proving that the events were caused by clouds caught in very powerful vortexes. Luscz-Cook and the UCB team say that the behaviors of clouds on the two planets are remarkably similar, and that they also bear resemblance to atmospheric events here on Earth. “The structure of Saturn's south polar vortex possesses similarities with terrestrial hurricanes, such as a well-formed central eye, concentric eyewalls and a surrounding ring of strong convection,” the group says.