Summer on Neptune

Martian-mooncat writes "According to New Scientist Neptune is now entering a 40-year summer. The report says that cloud cover changes show Neptune has its own seasons, despite being 4.5 billion miles from the Sun. There are some pretty Hubble pics too!"

Comments

Where's it coming from?

[zeugma-amp]

From the article:Observations indicate that Neptune experiences some very extreme of weather conditions. The planet's average surface temperature is thought to be about -218 C, with storm winds of up to 1500 kilometres per hour.

One would think that so far from the sun, the energy recieved by Neptune would be fairly feeble. What is driving winds like that? I would have to guess it is core temperature. I've often heard of Jupiter referred to as a 'failed star'. I'm not exactly sure how accurate that is, but from what I've read about our guesses of the planet's internal dynamics, it's a moderately accurate portrayal. (I believe it even emits more light than it reflects from Sol. I've never heard the description applied to Uranus or Neptune, but I wonder if it would accurately be said of all the gas giants. Comments anyone?

I also think that it's interesting to consider that given the really long orbital periods of the outer 3 planets, we've not really been able to observe much of the changing conditions (i.e. seasons) one would normally associate with the variations that occur over the period of a complete orbit.