The innermost lane may typically be favored to win a race, but in Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, the winds in its outermost “lane” are taking the lead! Only Hubble can spot these trends: The observatory acts like a storm tracker for the giant planets in our solar system every year.
Tag: planetary atmosphere
There might be many planets with water-rich atmospheres
A new study by University of Chicago and Stanford University researchers suggests that hot, rocky exoplanets could not only develop atmospheres full of water vapor, but keep them for long stretches.
Purported phosphine on Venus more likely to be ordinary sulfur dioxide, new study shows
A University of Washington-led team has revisited and comprehensively reinterpreted radio telescope observations underlying a 2019 claim of phosphine in the atmosphere of Venus. They report that sulfur dioxide, a common gas in the atmosphere of Venus, is likely what was detected instead of phosphine.
Dark Storm on Neptune Reverses Direction, Possibly Shedding a Fragment
A giant dark storm on Neptune heading for certain doom at the equator mysteriously halted its journey and began drifting in the opposite direction. Almost simultaneously, another smaller dark spot appeared nearby, only to vanish months later. Hubble astronomers are presenting these findings today at the Fall 2020 American Geophysical Union meeting.
No Blue Skies for Super-Hot Planet WASP-79b
Combined observations of WASP-79b from Hubble and other telescopes reveal a weird super-hot planet where the sky is yellow instead of blue due to lack of an atmospheric effect called Rayleigh scattering, which makes Earth’s sky blue.
Hubble’s New Portrait of Jupiter
This new Hubble Space Telescope view of Jupiter, taken on June 27, 2019, reveals the giant planet’s trademark Great Red Spot, and a more intense color palette in the clouds swirling in Jupiter’s turbulent atmosphere than seen in previous years.