Massive Earth-Sized Storm Spotted On Neptune

Astronomers have spotted a storm system nearly the size of Earth near Neptune's equator, a region where no bright cloud has been seen before. "Seeing a storm this bright at such a low latitude is extremely surprising," said Ned Molter, an astronomy graduate student at the University of California-Berkeley. "Normally, this area is really quiet and we only see bright clouds in the mid-latitude bands, so to have such an enormous cloud sitting right at the equator is spectacular," Molter said in a statement released by the university on Thursday. Molter spotted the storm complex near Neptune's equator during a dawn test run of twilight observing at W. M. Keck Observatory on Maunakea, Hawaii. The findings showed that useful observations can be made during twilight, a time most astronomers consider unusable because it is not dark enough. This massive storm system, which was found in a region where no bright cloud has ever been seen before, is about 9,000 kilometres in length, or one-third the size of Neptune's radius, spanning at least 30 degrees in both latitude and longitude. Agencies