The sun blazing down on your face in the middle of summer. A coconut drink in hand. You look to your right and see a family throwing a frisbee, and a dog playing along trying to catch it. You feel a chill, and your drink is frozen. On your left you see a 1,500 mph storm forming. Oh no. Welcome to Neptune.

In 1989, Voyager 2 Observed the formation of one of the famous Neptune storms. In 2015, scientists observed the formation of a mini-storm. And now, unexpectedly, the Hubble Space telescope is observing the formation of one of six mass storms on the “Ice Giant.” The analysis of clouds from the 2015 spot and the new dark spot has shown that the formation of an individual dark spot, or storm, takes place over a much longer tie than previously realized.

They hope to use this research in computer simulations of future storms and will lead to more research on deep atmospheric conditions on Neptune and other more distant planets/exo-planets.