A giant, years-long storm on Neptune is disappearing — and it's being caught on camera for the first time

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February 20, 2018 6:47 PM

The Hubble Telescope is capturing a disappearing storm on Neptune for the first time, and it's changing scientists' understanding of the planet.

A huge storm on Neptune is disappearing, and the Hubble Telescope is documenting it for the first time.
The storm has led scientists to question their understanding of the prevailing dynamics of Neptune's atmosphere.
The storm appears to be moving in the opposite direction than scientists predicted.

A dark storm on Neptune is big enough to stretch from Boston to Portugal on Earth — but it's fading away as the Hubble Telescope watches.

Neptune's giant storms were first discovered by NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft in the late 1980s. Since then, the storms have "played a game of peek-a-boo" with NASA's Hubble Telescope over the years, the agency said.

The latest storm was spotted in 2015 but is being photographed for the first time. In some ways, it's similar to Jupiter's famous Great Red Spo t, which is also disappearing.

When Neptune's storm was first detected, it was estimated to be 3,100 miles across. It's now down to 2,300 miles. Here's what it looks like in a series of recent Hubble images:

How long a storm lasts varies greatly from planet to planet. Storms on Neptune typically last for a few years. Jupiter's Great Red Spot has been around since perhaps the 1600s. Earth's longest recorded storm, by comparison, lasted 31 days — that was Hurricane John in 1994.

Watch a NASA video about the storm disappearing here:

Hubble Watches Neptune’s Dark Storm Die

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