(May 13) -- New pictures of Jupiter show that a huge band of
dark clouds that normally surrounds the giant planet has vanished.
The planet's appearance usually is dominated by two dark bands in its
atmosphere -- one in the north and another in the south -- along with the
Giant Red Spot, an enormous storm that is more than twice the size of Earth.
All three were visible at the end of last year before the planet went behind
the sun. When it re-emerged last month, new pictures from Australian
astronomer Anthony
Wesley showed the southern cloud band was nowhere to be seen.
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SCIENCE
New Pictures Show Jupiter Is Missing a Stripe
"It just doesn't look
right," amateur astronomer Bob King of Duluth, Minn., wrote on his blog AstroBob.
"Jupiter with only one belt is almost like seeing Saturn when its rings are
edge-on and invisible for a time."
This is not the first time the southern band has gone missing. It vanished in
the 1990s and was also absent in 1973 when NASA took its first close-up pictures
of the planet, according to New
Scientist.
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