Mysterious Neptune dark spot detected from Earth along with a distinct new feature

It is not just Neptune that has these large spots; they are common among gas giants. You might have already heard about the famous great red spot on Jupiter. The first dark spot on Neptune was discovered by NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft in in 1989. Since then, that spacecraft has travelled beyond the limits of our solar system.

“Since the first discovery of a dark spot, I’ve always wondered what these short-lived and elusive dark features are,” said Patrick Irwin, lead author of a study on the spot published in the journal Nature Astronomy yesterday, in a press statement. Irwin is a professor at the University of Oxford.

While the origin of these spots remains a mystery, the researchers have ruled out one possibility—that the dark spots are caused by “clearings” in the cloud. The new study indicates that its more likely the dark spots are a result of air particles darkening in a layer below the main visible layer of the atmosphere.

“In the process, we discovered a rare deep bright cloud type that had never been identified before, even from space,” said study co-author Michael Wong in a press statement. Wong is a researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, USA.

This rare type of cloud appeared as a bright spot right next to the large dark spot they were studying. Data from VLT showed that the “deep bright cloud” was at the same level in the atmosphere as the dark spot. This is a completely new kind of feature that has been observed for the first time.

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