A high-definition video camera outside the space station captured stark and sobering views of Hurricane Florence, a Category 4 storm. Image Credit: ESA/NASA–A. Gerst
The scene is a late-spring afternoon in the Amazonis Planitia region of northern Mars. The view covers an area about four-tenths of a mile (644 meters) across. North is toward the top. The length of the dusty whirlwind’s shadow indicates that the dust plume reaches more than half a mile (800 meters) in height. The plume is about 30 yards or meters in diameter. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona
A false-color image of the Great Red Spot of Jupiterfrom Voyager 1. The white oval storm directly below the Great Red Spot has the approximate diameter of Earth. NASA, Caltech/JPL
The huge storm (great white spot) churning through the atmosphere in Saturn’s northern hemisphere overtakes itself as it encircles the planet in this true-color view from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. Credit: Cassini Imaging Team, SSI, JPL, ESA, NASA; Color Composite: Jean-Luc Dauvergne
The spinning vortex of Saturn’s north polar storm resembles a deep red rose of giant proportions surrounded by green foliage in this false-color image from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. Measurements have sized the eye at 1,250 miles (2,000 kilometers) across with cloud speeds as fast as 330 miles per hour (150 meters per second). This image is among the first sunlit views of Saturn’s north pole captured by Cassini’s imaging cameras. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI
Colorized infrared image of Uranus obtained on August 6, 2014, with adaptive optics on the 10-meter Keck telescope; white spots are large storms. Image credit: Imke de Pater, University of California, Berkeley / Keck Observatory images.
Neptune’s Great Dark Spot, a large anticyclonic storm similar to Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, observed by NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft in 1989. Credit: NASA / Jet Propulsion Lab
This true color image captured by NASA’S Cassini spacecraft before a distant flyby of Saturn’s moon Titan on June 27, 2012, shows a south polar vortex, or a swirling mass of gas around the pole in the atmosphere. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute
This artist’s concept shows what the weather might look like on cool star-like bodies known as brown dwarfs. These giant balls of gas start out life like stars, but lack the mass to sustain nuclear fusion at their cores, and instead, fade and cool with time.
New research from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope suggests that most brown dwarfs are racked with colossal storms akin to Jupiter’s famous “Great Red Spot.” These storms may be marked by fierce winds, and possibly lightning. The turbulent clouds might also rain down molten iron, hot sand or salts – materials thought to make up the cloud layers of brown dwarfs.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Western Ontario/Stony Brook University
In this image, the nightmare world of HD 189733 b is the killer you never see coming. To the human eye, this far-off planet looks bright blue. But any space traveler confusing it with the friendly skies of Earth would be badly mistaken. The weather on this world is deadly. Its winds blow up to 5,400 mph (2 km/s) at seven times the speed of sound, whipping all would-be travelers in a sickening spiral around the planet. And getting caught in the rain on this planet is more than an inconvenience; it’s death by a thousand cuts. This scorching alien world possibly rains glass—sideways—in its howling winds. The cobalt blue color comes not from the reflection of a tropical ocean, as on Earth, but rather a hazy, blow-torched atmosphere containing high clouds laced with silicate particles. Image Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser
