There is something strange on Neptune. Researchers have studied 17 years of data from the planet using telescopes, including the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope. They can't explain the swings in the planet's temperatures.
Neptune is moving around the sun. Its seasons are much slower than those on Earth, lasting around 40 years. In the southern hemisphere, it has been summer since 2005, so researchers were surprised by the apparent significant variation in temperatures.
The data cover less than half of a Neptune season, so no one was expecting to see large and rapid changes.
The global average temperature of the planet dropped by eight degrees Celsius (46 degrees Fahrenheit) between 2003 and 2018, and then rose by 11 degrees Celsius (52 degrees Fahrenheit) between the years of 2018 and 2020. While Neptune is known to host areas of atmospheric turbulence, it isn't enough to explain how temperatures rose so fast. The global cooling is strange.
The lead author of the study said that they expected temperatures to be slowly increasing.
The astronomer had no clear answer as to what caused them. Some of the theories suggested by the European Southern Observatory are that the temperatures could be due to something happening in the chemistry of the planet or a weather phenomenon.
Astronomers will need to take more readings of Neptune using telescopes like the James Webb Space Telescope.
Roman says that Neptune is intriguing to many people because they still don't know much about it.
The research is published in a journal.
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