Atlantis Online
March 29, 2024, 05:22:27 am
Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
News: THE SEARCH FOR ATLANTIS IN CUBA
A Report by Andrew Collins
http://www.andrewcollins.com/page/articles/atlantiscuba.htm
 
  Home Help Arcade Gallery Links Staff List Calendar Login Register  

Scientists: Cold Neptune has a warm spot

Pages: [1]   Go Down
  Print  
Author Topic: Scientists: Cold Neptune has a warm spot  (Read 44 times)
0 Members and 31 Guests are viewing this topic.
Penny
Superhero Member
******
Posts: 2278



« on: September 21, 2007, 01:31:08 pm »

Scientists: Cold Neptune has a warm spot

Story Highlights
Neptune's south pole is about 18 degrees warmer than other parts of the planet

Neptune has an average temperature colder than 320 degrees below zero

The reason: The south pole has been in the summer sunlight for about 40 years

Neptune is nearly 2.8 billion miles away from the sun






     
PARIS, France (AP) -- Scientists say that Neptune, one of the coldest planets in the solar system, has a surprising warm spot -- relatively speaking.




Neptune's south pole has been in the summer sunlight for about 40 years.

 An international team of astronomers has found that Neptune's south pole is warmer than other parts of the planet.

Temperatures at its south pole are about 18 degrees warmer than elsewhere on the planet -- not much for a planet with an average temperature colder than 320 degrees below zero.

The apparent reason is that the south pole has been in the summer sunlight for about 40 years.

Neptune is nearly 2.8 billion miles away from the sun. A Neptunian year -- the time it takes to orbit the sun -- is equivalent to about 165 Earth years.

One result of that has been to expose Neptune's southern pole to the sun for nearly 40 years, warming it up. Because it is so far away, Neptune gets only 1/900th of the sunlight that Earth receives, but it still appears to have had a significant impact.

An array of scientific organizations announced the findings Tuesday, including the government-funded CNRS research body in France and ESO, the European Organization for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere, whose telescope in Chile was used.

"Neptune's south pole is currently tilted toward the sun, just like the Earth's south pole is tilted toward the sun during summer in the southern hemisphere," astronomer Glenn Orton, lead author of the findings, said in an ESO news release.

"On Neptune, the Antarctic summer lasts 40 years instead of a few months, and a lot of solar energy input during that time can make big temperature differences between the regions in continual sunlight and those with day-night variations," he said.

The heat has, in turn, defrosted methane normally trapped as ice in the planet's atmosphere, releasing it as gas, the CNRS said. It said there is eight times more methane over the south pole than in the rest of the planet's atmosphere.

The abundance of gaseous methane in Neptune's stratosphere had gone unexplained until now, it added.

Despite its distance from sun, "the atmosphere of Neptune is a scene of great activity" -- perhaps more so than those of Jupiter or Saturn, even though they are closer, CNRS said. E-mail to a friend

Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.


http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/space/09/21/neptune.ap/index.html
Report Spam   Logged

Share on Facebook Share on Twitter



Pages: [1]   Go Up
  Print  
 
Jump to:  

Powered by EzPortal
Bookmark this site! | Upgrade This Forum
SMF For Free - Create your own Forum
Powered by SMF | SMF © 2016, Simple Machines
Privacy Policy