Neptune has a mysterious “dark spot”: scientists have discovered a void 20 times the size of the Grand Canyon

When it comes to planets with large spots, Jupiter and its famous Great Red Spot might come to mind.

But a study has shed new light on a large, less well-known spot in our solar system.

Using the European Space Agency’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), scientists have observed a large dark spot on Neptune about 6,200 miles (10,000 km) in diameter — 20 times the size of the Grand Canyon.

This large void has a smaller bright spot next to it, and scientists are still not sure how it formed.

Speaking to MailOnline, University of Oxford professor Patrick Irwin and lead investigator on the study said: “We know that these dark spots are anticyclonic vortices, just like Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, but how and why they form is not known.” clearly understood.’

Using the European Space Agency’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), scientists have observed a large dark spot on Neptune about 6,200 miles (10,000 km) in diameter — 20 times the size of the Grand Canyon.

Neptune’s dark spot was first spotted by NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft in 1989.

However, it is not a permanent feature and goes away every few years. This makes observing them in sufficient detail difficult.

And in 2018, NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope discovered the dark spot again.

“The Hubble Space Telescope has seen several dark spots since Voyager 2 GDS,” said Professor Irwin.

“These patches seem to form randomly every few years at mid-northern or southern latitudes and then drift toward the equator, finally disappearing after one Earth year or so.”

In this new study, Professor Irwin and his team study the dark spot on Earth for the first time.

The VLT is equipped with a multi-unit spectral finder, which divides sunlight reflected from Neptune into its component colors and wavelengths.

This allowed the team to study the site in more detail than ever before.

Professor Irwin said: “I am thrilled to have been able to not only first detect a dark spot from Earth, but also record a reflection spectrum of such a feature for the first time.”

Different wavelengths probe for different depths in Neptune’s atmosphere, which means the spectrograph can infer the size and height of the dark spot, as well as its chemical composition.

The new observations rule out the possibility that the dark spots are caused by cloud “removal”.

The VLT is equipped with a multi-unit spectral finder, which divides sunlight reflected from Neptune into its component colors and wavelengths.

Instead, the researchers believe the dark spots are likely the result of ice and haze mixing in the atmosphere, causing air molecules to darken.

The observations also provided a surprising result.

“In the process we discovered a rare type of deep bright cloud that had not been identified before, even from space,” said Dr. Michael Wong, co-author of the study from the University of California, Berkeley.

These rare clouds explain the presence of the bright spot next to the larger dark spot, according to the researchers.

The team hopes the results will show the capabilities of ground-based telescopes.

“This is an amazing increase in humanity’s ability to observe the universe,” added Dr. Wong.

“At first, we could only detect these spots by sending spacecraft there, such as Voyager. Then we gained the ability to observe them from a distance using Hubble.

Finally, technology has evolved to enable this from Earth. And that could put me off as a Hubble observer!

What is Jupiter’s Great Red Spot?

Jupiter’s Great Red Spot is a giant oval of crimson clouds in Jupiter’s southern hemisphere that race counterclockwise around the oval’s circumference.

It is the largest storm in the solar system, and appears as a deep red ball surrounded by layers of pale yellow, orange and white.

Caught between two jet streams, the Great Red Spot is an anticyclone that is swirling around a high-pressure center that rotates in the opposite direction to hurricanes on Earth.

Jupiter’s Great Red Spot is a giant oval of crimson clouds in Jupiter’s southern hemisphere that race counterclockwise around the oval’s circumference

NASA astronomers said winds inside the storm were measured at several hundred miles per hour, with gusts of wind larger than any storm on Earth.

In the late 19th century, it was estimated to be about 35,000 miles (about 56,000 km) in diameter, wide enough for four terrestrial planets to fit side by side.

The Great Red Spot is 10,000 miles (16,000 km) wide as of April 3, 2017, 1.3 times the width of Earth, and is gradually shrinking over time.