Jupiter is not the only planet in our solar system that harbors a “Great Spot.” Along with Uranus, Neptune also harbors a greats spot within its planetary atmosphere. These spots are a result of a atmospheric disturbances on Neptune that manifests themselves as giant storm systems with winds swirling at a thousand miles or more.
The storms on Neptune are not quite a permanent as Jupiter's red spot. A spot was first observed in the southern hemisphere of Neptune as Voyager to made a pass in 1989. Just five years later, the Hubble telescope observed that the southern hemispheric storm dissipated and a new spot was observed in the northern hemisphere. More recent observations show even more sporadic spot development and dissipation. Some of these spots are the result of large circulations, while others may be large cloud systems.
These storms are generated in the swirling winds of the Neptunian atmosphere. This atmosphere is quite complex, with low, middle, and high clouds, all made up of different material and structure. On Earth we have different names of all of our cloud types. Imagine that on Neptune you would have to come up with an entirely new classification system for clouds!
Some of these clouds build into towering complexes that burst through to the top of the Neptunian atmosphere, which appear as great white spots from ground and space based telescopes.
Neptune is the eighth planet from the sun, orbiting at about 2.8 billions miles from the Sun. Since it has an atmosphere that readily radiates heat from the dark side of the planet at it highest level, Neptune is known to harbor some of the coldest temperatures within our solar sytem, even colder than Pluto.
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