Neptune has seasons which drive some of the features in its atmosphere, but those seasons are much longer than on Earth, lasting for decades rather than months.
This new Hubble view of Neptune shows a dark storm near the top center of the planet’s disc in the region currently experiencing “summer.” The feature is the fourth and latest dark vortex captured by Hubble since 1993. Two other dark storms were discovered by the Voyager 2 spacecraft in 1989 as it flew by the remote planet. Since the Voyager flyby, Hubble has been out only telescope with sufficient sensitivity in blue light to track such elusive features which have appeared and faded quickly.
Image Credit: NASA / STScI
A long thread of hydrogen is being stripped from the spiral galaxy D100 as it drawn toward the center of the giant Coma galaxy cluster. This wide view is a composite of images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and the Subaru Telescope in Hawaii. The narrow red streamer of hydrogen gas flowing from the galaxy’s center extends for nearly 200,000 light-years, but it is quite narrow–only 7,000 light-years wide. The tail’s clean edges and smooth structure suggests that it’s being held together by magnetic fields.
