Seasons Happen, Neptune Brightens

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22 April 2003 TG

Hubble Space Telescope (HST) imaging observations in August 2002 show that Neptune’s brightness has increased significantly since 1996 and now appears to be consistent with a simple seasonal variation model. These results are described by L. A. Sromovsky, P. M. Fry, and S. S. Limaye of the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s Space Science and Engineering Center, and K. Baines of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in an upcoming paper in the solar system science journal Icarus (Volume 163, Issue 1).