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Space and Planets

Fierce Storms On Other Worlds

Not all storms take place on the earth. Thank goodness they don't because the most fierce storms are on other planets. A bad storm here would look like nothing on some other planets.

(Free Movie Viewer Available HERE)

If springtime on Earth were anything like it will be on Uranus, we would be experiencing waves of massive storms, each one covering the country from Kansas to New York, with temperatures of 300 degrees below zero. The movie, created by Hubble researcher Erich Karkoschka of the University of Arizona, clearly shows for the first time the wobble in the ring system, which is made of billions of tiny pebbles. This wobble may be caused by Uranus' shape, which is like a slightly flattened globe, along with the gravitational tug from its many moons.

Although Uranus has been observed for more than 200 years, "no one has ever seen this view in the modern era of astronomy because of the long year of Uranus — more than 84 Earth years," said Dr. Heidi Hammel, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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(Source: NASA)

Before the advent of Mars-orbiting spacecraft, astronomers had a sketchy view of the Red Planet's ever-changing weather. Though Mars is one of the nearest planets to Earth, the distance between it and Earth varies greatly. The two planets circle the Sun like race cars circling a track at different speeds — and Earth "laps" Mars approximately every two years.

Martian dust storms are most likely to erupt during the Spring and early Summer in the planet's southern hemisphere — a time when Mars is closest to the Sun. Since Mars has a more elliptical orbit than Earth, its distance from the Sun varies widely. This variance causes a significant variability in the Martian climate.

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Source: NASA

The Great Red Spot on Jupiter is now known to be a very long lasting storm. It was seen when telescopes were first used to view the heavens in the early 1600s. By the way the Earth could fit in it.

Bands of eastward and westward winds on Jupiter appear as concentric rotating circles in this movie composed of Cassini spacecraft images that have been re-projected as if the viewer were looking down at Jupiter's north pole and the planet were flattened.

The sequence covers 70 days, from October 1 to December 9, 2000. Cassini's narrow-angle camera captured the images of Jupiter's atmosphere in the near-infrared region of the spectrum.

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Cassini's narrow-angle camera captured the images of Jupiter's atmosphere from October 1 to December 9, 2000, in the near-infrared region of the spectrum. The view here is a cylindrical projection centered in the planet's equator.

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(Source: (NASA)

This NASA Hubble Space Telescope image of the ringed planet Saturn shows a storm that appears as a white arrowhead-shaped feature near the planet's equator. The storm is generated by an upwelling of warmer air, similar to a thunderstorm here on Earth. The east-west extent of this storm is equal to the diameter of the Earth (about 7,900 miles).


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Notice the chaotic condition of the Saturn cloud cover

(Source: NASA)

In 1994 three huge storms were visible on Neptune. These storms seem to be more fierce then when first sighted years before.

To give you an idea of the size of these storms, the planet Neptune is the smallest of the gas giants (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus), yet it is so large it could hold over 60 planet earths.


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This movie points out the storms raging on Neptune.

And planets are not the only places where storms occur. The sun experiences many storms, causing solar flares to shoot out many miles and if they are large enough, disrupting radio transmission on earth.

(Picture Source: NOAA)

So before you decide to take a vacation on Mars, you better check the weather there first. Oh and please, stay off the sun.


 


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