After the discovery of the strange ice volcanoes on Pluto we discussed in the previous episode of this series, the outer solar system has puzzled us again with a weird temperature anomaly on Neptune, the most distant planet in the solar system. Voyager 2 is the only spacecraft that has ever visited Neptune. It’s so far away that very few ground-based telescopes can study this ice giant.
And now, 17 years of data collected by six prominent telescopes show that Neptune is experiencing temperature fluctuations that cannot be explained yet. This discovery comes at just the right time because the James Webb Space Telescope will soon begin its scientific observations. It’s an infrared observatory and just the right machine to solve Neptune’s summer mystery.
