Uploaded December 2020 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
Hubble Space Telescope observations taken in January 2020 show a full day's rotation — which takes 16 hours — on Neptune, the giant planet that guards the outer solar system. You can see a pair of dark spots in the northern hemisphere; the big one recently was migrating south but for unknown reasons turned around and headed north again. The smaller spot may have spun off it during that maneuver.
Credit: NASA / ESA / M.H. Wong (University of California, Berkeley), L.A. Sromovsky and P.M. Fry (University of Wisconsin-Madison), and J. DePasquale (STScI)
Original video: hubblesite.org/contents/media/videos/2020/59/1299-Video?news=true
Hubble Space Telescope observations taken in January 2020 show a full day's rotation — which takes 16 hours — on Neptune, the giant planet that guards the outer solar system. You can see a pair of dark spots in the northern hemisphere; the big one recently was migrating south but for unknown reasons turned around and headed north again. The smaller spot may have spun off it during that maneuver.
Credit: NASA / ESA / M.H. Wong (University of California, Berkeley), L.A. Sromovsky and P.M. Fry (University of Wisconsin-Madison), and J. DePasquale (STScI)
Original video: hubblesite.org/contents/media/videos/2020/59/1299-Video?news=true
