Scientists are still in the dark about what is causing a huge shadowy patch to appear against the blue background of Neptune’s sky.
Astronomers have observed a huge, mysterious dark spot on the surface of Neptune from Earth for the first time — and discovered a puzzling bright counterpart close to it.
"Dark spots are very large, 6,200 to 9,300 miles in diameter and very mysterious,” Irwin, lead author of a paper published in the journal Science, told Live Science via email. “When the Great Dark Spot was observed by Voyager 2, there was some speculation that it might be similar to Jupiter's Great Red Spot, but we now know that Neptune's dark spots are very different.
The light spot seen by the astronomers, which is at the same level in the atmosphere as the dark spot, wasn't present in observations of Neptune conducted a few weeks before MUSE collected its data, and this seems to imply it is a short-lived feature.
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