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Posted by baalke on September 18, 2007, 3:25 pm
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http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=3D2007-103
A Warm South Pole? Yes, on Neptune!
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
September 18, 2007
PASADENA, Calif. -- An international team of astronomers has
discovered
that Neptune's south pole is much hotter than the rest of the planet.
They have published the first temperature maps of the lowest portion
of
Neptune's atmosphere, which show that this warm south pole is
providing
an avenue for methane to escape out of the deep atmosphere.
"The temperatures are so high that methane gas, which should be frozen
out in the upper part of Neptune's atmosphere, the stratosphere, can
leak out through this region," said Glenn Orton of NASA's Jet
Propulsion
Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. Orton is lead author of a paper appearing
in the Sept. 18 issue of the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics. These
findings were made using the Very Large Telescope, located in Chile,
operated by the European Organization for Astronomical Research in the
Southern Hemisphere (known as ESO).
In the paper, Orton and his colleagues report that the temperature at
Neptune's south pole is hotter than anywhere else on the planet by
about
10 degrees Celsius (18 degrees Fahrenheit). The average temperature on
Neptune is about minus 200 degrees Celsius (minus 392 degrees
Fahrenheit).
Neptune, the farthest known planet of our solar system, is located
about
30 times farther away from the sun than Earth is. Only about one
thousandth of the sunlight received by our planet reaches Neptune.
Yet,
the small amount of sunlight Neptune does receive significantly
affects
the planet's atmosphere.
The astronomers found that these temperature variations are consistent
with seasonal changes. A Neptunian year lasts about 165 Earth years.
It
has been summer in the south pole of Neptune for about 40 years now,
and
they predict that as winter turns to summer at the north pole, an
abundance of methane would leak out of a warm north pole in about 80
years.
"Neptune's south pole is currently tilted toward the sun, just as the
Earth's south pole is tilted toward sun during summer in the southern
hemisphere," explains Orton. "But 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. This is a
likely
factor in Neptune having the strongest winds of any planet in the
solar
system; sometimes, the wind blows there at more than 2,000 kilometers
per hour [1,240 miles per hour]," said Orton.
The new observations also reveal mysterious high-latitude "hot spots"
in
the stratosphere that have no immediate analogue in other planetary
atmospheres. The astronomers think this feature was generated by
upwelling gas from much deeper in the atmosphere.
Methane is not the primary constituent of Neptune's atmosphere, which,
as a giant planet, is mostly composed of the light gases, hydrogen and
helium. But it is the methane in Neptune's upper atmosphere that
absorbs
the red light from the sun and reflects the blue light from the sun
back
into space, making Neptune appear blue.
The new results were obtained with the Very Large Telescope and
spectrometer for the mid-infrared, operated by the European
Organization
for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere (known as ESO).
In addition to Orton, the team of astronomers includes C=E9dric Leyrat
and
A=2E James Friedson of JPL; Therese Encrenaz of Laboratoire d'Etudes
Spatiales et d'Instrumentation en Astrophysique, Paris, France; and
Richard Puetter of the Center for Astrophysics and Space Sciences,
University of California, San Diego.
JPL is managed for NASA by the California Institute of Technology in
Pasadena.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Carolina Martinez 818-354-9382
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
carolina.martinez@jpl.nasa.gov
Henri Boffin +49-89-3209-6222
ESO, Garching, Germany
hboffin@eso.org
2007-103
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Posted by gb7648 on September 18, 2007, 6:55 pm
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"Neptune, the farthest known planet in our solar system?"
How can one ignore a hundred years of history, nobody would naturally
assume that Pluto is not a planet, it is round, it has Moons and it
orbits
the Sun on it's own, occasionally crossing into Neptune's orbit.
There is not one reason why Pluto would not be a planet.
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Posted by gb7648 on September 18, 2007, 7:00 pm
Please log in for more thread options > "Neptune, the farthest known planet in our solar system?"
>
> How can one ignore a hundred years of history, nobody would naturally
> assume that Pluto is not a planet, it is round, it has Moons and it
> orbits
> the Sun on it's own, occasionally crossing into Neptune's orbit.
>
> There is not one reason why Pluto would not be a planet.
Secondly, what if Jupiter and Saturn would cross orbital paths. Which
one
would not be a planet?
100 million percent discrimination, a mindset of fascism taking
control of mind.
Crimes against humanity. If it would be about a person.
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