About Space Only's video: Rotation of Neptune

This video is a full-globe map of the distant planet Neptune, created from Hubble Space Telescope data taken Jan. 7-8, 2020. The movie reveals Neptune's dynamic weather: white clouds of methane ice crystals swirling around the planet and two giant dark spots churning in the northern hemisphere. The larger spot, a giant storm, resides at the top of the planet; the smaller spot, is located below and to the right of its bigger cousin. The planet completes a rotation every 16 hours. Around the southern pole, banding is concentrated where the winds are blowing west to east, in the same direction as the planet's rotation. Closer to the equator, including where the dark vortex sits, the winds are blowing east to west, in the opposite direction as the planet's rotation. The giant vortex is 7,400 kilometers (4,600 miles) across, wider than the Atlantic Ocean. The slightly smaller companion is 6,300 kilometers (3,900 miles) across. The smaller feature may be a spin-off of the giant storm that later disappeared. The large storm is the fourth transient dark spot Hubble has observed since 1993. NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft first imaged two dark features in Neptune's southern hemisphere in 1989 as Voyager flew by the distant planet. Those storms had disappeared by the time Hubble looked at Neptune in 1994. However, Hubble detected two new dark spots in the planet's northern hemisphere in 1994 and 1996. It's unclear how these storms form. Their clouds may be rising to higher altitudes, compared to surrounding regions in the gas giant's atmosphere. Neptune's predominantly blue color is due to the absorption of red light by the distant planet's methane-rich atmosphere. Credits: NASA, ESA, M.H. Wong (University of California, Berkeley), L.A. Sromovsky and P.M. Fry (University of Wisconsin-Madison), and J. DePasquale (STScI)