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Great Dark Spot
The Great Dark Spot (also known as GDS-89, for Great Dark Spot, 1989) was one of a series of dark spots on Neptune similar in appearance to Jupiter's Great Red Spot. In 1989, GDS-89 was the first Great Dark Spot on Neptune to be observed by NASA's ''Voyager 2'' space probe. Like Jupiter's spot, the Great Dark Spots are anticyclonic storms. However, their interiors are relatively cloud-free, and unlike Jupiter's spot, which has lasted for hundreds of years, their lifetimes appear to be shorter, forming and dissipating once every few years or so. Based on observations taken with ''Voyager 2'' and since then with the Hubble Space Telescope, Neptune appears to spend somewhat more than half its time with a Great Dark Spot. Little is known about the origins, movement, and disappearance of the dark spots observed on the planet since 1989. Characteristics The Great Dark Spot was captured by NASA's ''Voyager 2'' space probe in Neptune's southern hemisphere. The dark, elliptically shape ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Neptune's Great Dark Spot
Neptune is the eighth and farthest known planet from the Sun. It is the List of Solar System objects by size, fourth-largest planet in the Solar System by diameter, the third-most-massive planet, and the densest giant planet. It is 17 times the mass of Earth. Compared to Uranus, its neighbouring ice giant, Neptune is slightly smaller, but more massive and denser. Being composed primarily of gases and liquids, it has no well-defined solid surface. Neptune orbits the Sun once every 164.8 julian year (astronomy), years at an orbital distance of . It is named after Neptune (mythology), the Roman god of the sea and has the astronomical symbol representing Trident of Poseidon, Neptune's trident. Neptune is not visible to the unaided eye and is the only planet in the Solar System that was not initially observed by direct empirical observation. Rather, unexpected changes in the orbit of Uranus led Alexis Bouvard to hypothesise that its orbit was subject to gravitational Pe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Trident (spacecraft)
''Trident'' is a space mission concept to the outer planets proposed in 2019 to NASA's Discovery Program. The concept includes flybys of and with a focus on Neptune's largest moon . In 2020, Trident was selected along with three other Discovery pr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Astronomy Picture Of The Day
Astronomy is a natural science that studies celestial objects and the phenomena that occur in the cosmos. It uses mathematics, physics, and chemistry in order to explain their origin and their overall evolution. Objects of interest include planets, moons, stars, nebulae, galaxies, meteoroids, asteroids, and comets. Relevant phenomena include supernova explosions, gamma ray bursts, quasars, blazars, pulsars, and cosmic microwave background radiation. More generally, astronomy studies everything that originates beyond Earth's atmosphere. Cosmology is a branch of astronomy that studies the universe as a whole. Astronomy is one of the oldest natural sciences. The early civilizations in recorded history made methodical observations of the night sky. These include the Egyptians, Babylonians, Greeks, Indians, Chinese, Maya, and many ancient indigenous peoples of the Americas. In the past, astronomy included disciplines as diverse as astrometry, celestial navigati ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of the longest-running newspapers in the United States, the ''Times'' serves as one of the country's Newspaper of record, newspapers of record. , ''The New York Times'' had 9.13 million total and 8.83 million online subscribers, both by significant margins the List of newspapers in the United States, highest numbers for any newspaper in the United States; the total also included 296,330 print subscribers, making the ''Times'' the second-largest newspaper by print circulation in the United States, following ''The Wall Street Journal'', also based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' is published by the New York Times Company; since 1896, the company has been chaired by the Ochs-Sulzberger family, whose current chairman and the paper's publ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Space Telescope Science Institute
The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) is the science operations center for the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), science operations and mission operations center for the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), and science operations center for the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. STScI was established in 1981 as a community-based science center that is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA). STScI's offices are located on the Johns Hopkins University Homewood Campus of Johns Hopkins University, Homewood Campus and in the The Rotunda (Baltimore), Rotunda building in Baltimore, Maryland. In addition to performing continuing science operations of HST and preparing for scientific exploration with JWST and Roman, STScI manages and operates the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes (MAST), which holds data from numerous active and legacy missions, including HST, JWST, Kepler Space Telescope, Kepler, Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, T ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Small Dark Spot
The Small Dark Spot, sometimes also called Dark Spot 2 or The Wizard's Eye, was an extraterrestrial vortex on the planet Neptune. It was the second largest southern cyclonic storm on the planet in 1989, when ''Voyager 2'' flew by the planet. When the Hubble Space Telescope observed Neptune in 1994, the storm had disappeared. Observation history The Small Dark Spot was discovered in 1989 by the Voyager 2 spacecraft along with the Great Dark Spot and Scooter (a bright fast moving cloud located between the two giant storms). The Small Dark Spot was found at a latitude of 54° South while rotating East around Neptune with a period of 16.1 hours. Unlike the Great Dark Spot (which has some of the highest measured wind speeds in the Solar System), wind speed data was not taken for the Small Dark Spot. The spot was also observed without any white "companion clouds" present around its edges, again in contrast to the Great Dark Spot. When NASA pointed the Hubble Space Telescope toward N ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oval BA
The atmosphere of Jupiter is the largest planetary atmosphere in the Solar System. It is mostly made of molecular hydrogen and helium in roughly solar proportions; other chemical compounds are present only in small amounts and include methane, ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, and water. Although water is thought to reside deep in the atmosphere, its directly-measured concentration is very low. The nitrogen, sulfur, and noble gas abundances in Jupiter's atmosphere exceed solar values by a factor of about three. The atmosphere of Jupiter lacks a clear lower boundary and gradually transitions into the liquid interior of the planet. From lowest to highest, the atmospheric layers are the troposphere, stratosphere, thermosphere and exosphere. Each layer has characteristic temperature gradients. The lowest layer, the troposphere, has a complicated system of clouds and hazes composed of layers of ammonia, ammonium hydrosulfide, and water. The upper ammonia clouds visible at Jupiter's surface ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hypercane
A hypercane is a hypothetical class of extreme tropical cyclone that could form if sea surface temperatures reached approximately , which is warmer than the warmest ocean temperature ever recorded. Such an increase could be caused by a large asteroid or comet impact, a large supervolcanic eruption, a large submarine flood basalt, or "incredible" global warming. There is some speculation that a series of hypercanes resulting from the impact of a large asteroid or comet contributed to the demise of the non-avian dinosaurs. The hypothesis was created by Kerry Emanuel of MIT, who also coined the term. Description In order to form a hypercane, according to Emanuel's hypothetical model, the ocean temperature would have to be at least . A critical difference between a hypercane and present-day hurricanes is that a hypercane would extend into the upper stratosphere, where as present-day hurricanes extend into only the lower stratosphere. Hypercanes would have wind speeds of ove ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Great White Spot
The Great White Spot, also known as Great White Oval (named by analogy to Jupiter's Great Red Spot) is a series of periodic storms on the planet Saturn that are large enough to be visible from Earth by telescope by their characteristic white appearance. The spots can be several thousands of kilometers wide. The ''Cassini'' orbiter was able to track the 2010–11 instance of the storm, also known as the Northern Electrostatic Disturbance, because of an increase in radio and plasma interference, or the Great Springtime Storm. Cassini data has revealed a loss of acetylene in the white clouds, an increase of phosphine, and an unusual temperature drop in the center of the storm. After the visible aspects of the storm subsided, in 2012, a "belch" of heat and ethylene was emitted from two hotspots that merged. Occurrence The phenomenon is somewhat periodic at 28.5-year intervals, when Saturn's northern hemisphere tilts most toward the sun. Usually this is during the solar longitude of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Extraterrestrial Cyclone
An extraterrestrial vortex is a vortex that occurs on planets and natural satellites other than Earth that have sufficient atmospheres. Most observed extraterrestrial vortices have been seen in large cyclones or anticyclones. However, occasional dust storms have been known to produce vortices on Mars and Titan. Various spacecraft missions have recorded evidence of past and present extraterrestrial vortices. The largest extraterrestrial vortices are found on the gas giants, Jupiter and Saturn; and the ice giants, Uranus and Neptune. Mercury Due to Mercury's thin atmosphere, it does not experience weather-like storms or other atmospheric weather phenomena such as clouds, winds, or rain. Rather unusually, Mercury has magnetic 'tornadoes' that were observed by NASA's Mercury MESSENGER during a flyby in 2008. The tornadoes are twisted bundles of magnetic fields that connect Mercury's magnetic field to space. Venus Venus Express observed two large shape-shifting vortices on Venus' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dragon Storm (astronomy)
The Dragon Storm is a giant thunderstorm located in Saturn's southern hemisphere, which is labeled as the "storm alley" region. The storm could have a range of or more, and can be compared to the electric thunderstorms of Earth. It acquires its energy in the deep layers of Saturn's atmosphere and produces radio waves that reflect during its burst of short static which helped '' Cassini'' detect it. The Dragon Storm (named in September 2004 for its unusual shape) is a large, bright and complex convective storm in Saturn's southern hemisphere. It appears to be long-lived and periodically flares up to produce dramatic white cloudy plumes that then subside. This is similar to the extreme conditions on Jupiter Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the List of Solar System objects by size, largest in the Solar System. It is a gas giant with a Jupiter mass, mass more than 2.5 times that of all the other planets in the Solar System combined a ... at the site of its Grea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
China National Space Administration
The China National Space Administration (CNSA) is a government agency of the People's Republic of China headquartered in Haidian District, Haidian, Beijing, responsible for civil space administration and international space cooperation. These responsibilities include organizing or leading foreign exchanges and cooperation in the aerospace field. The CNSA is an administrative agency under the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense. Founded in 1993, CNSA has pioneered a number of achievements in space for China despite its relatively short history, including becoming the first space agency to land on the far side of the Moon with Chang'e 4, bringing material back from the Moon with Chang'e 5 and Chang'e 6, 6, and being the second agency who successfully landed a rover on Mars with Tianwen-1. Tianwen-2 is enroute to explore the co-orbital near-Earth asteroid 469219 Kamoʻoalewa and the active asteroid 311P/PanSTARRS and collecting samples of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
