12/22/2023 0 Comments Neptunes wind speedThe scientists detailed their findings in the May 16 issue of the journal Nature.įollow us, Facebook and Google+. Saturn and Jupiter should be more complicated to analyze than Uranus and Neptune because the former two planets have more jet streams than the latter pair, Kaspi said. "The four giant planets have more than 99 percent of the mass of the solar system outside the sun, and within the next few years, we're going to be learning about the dynamics of all of their atmospheres," Kaspi said. In the future, the Cassini spacecraft currently orbiting Saturn and NASA's Juno probe that is scheduled to reach Jupiter can analyze the gravity fields of those giant planets and help better explain their winds as well. "When it comes to thinking about the effects of dynamics on planetary formation, we're saying the bottom 90 percent of giant planets is static," Kaspi said. The new study has implications for how scientists understand how planets form. Each feature moves eastward at a different velocity, so it is only occasionally that they appear close to each other as shown here (Image credit: NASA) To the south is the bright feature nicknamed "Scooter." Still farther south is the "Dark Spot 2," which has a bright core. The wind speed achieved in some of these bands is almost 600 m/s, the. Neptune's Great Dark Spot dominates the center along with bright, white. As with the other gas giants, Neptunes atmosphere is divided into latitudinal bands. This image of Neptune was captured by NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft during an August 1989. The researchers found the windy layers of Uranus and Neptune occupy the outermost 0.15 and 0.2 percent of their masses, respectively, suggesting that shallow processes drive those winds, such as swirling caused by moisture condensing and evaporating in the atmosphere. Past studies have suggested the winds on Uranus and Neptune might arise one of two ways - either shallow processes in their outer atmospheres, or deeper atmospheric mechanisms extending into their interiors. Westward flow also occurs in the equatorial regions of Earth and Uranus 14, but the wind speeds are lower than those seen on Neptune. These findings help reveal how these winds originate, researchers said. For comparison, Neptune is about 30,600 miles (49,250 km) in diameter, while Uranus is approximately 31,500 miles (50,700 km) wide. Like Jupiter and Saturn, Neptune radiates more hear than it receives. The equatorial regions of Neptune possess average wind speeds of over 700 mph, which is faster than the speed of sound here on Earth. The scientists discovered the winds blow in relatively thin weather layers no more than 600 miles (1,000 kilometers) deep on both planets. The highest winds observed in the solar system have been measured on Neptune with speeds near 1,200 mph near the 'older' Great Dark Spot. By analyzing the gravity fields of these worlds, the investigators could deduce how their atmospheres circulated. The strength of a planet's gravity field depends on its amount of mass, and this strength can vary over the surface of a planet depending on the amount of mass lying under it. The researchers investigated the gravity fields of those worlds using data gathered by NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft and ground-based telescopes. Neptune has wind speeds as great as 1700 km/hr, which is comparable to the large wind speeds observed on Saturn.
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