A three-color composite image shows a belt that had previously vanished in Jupiter's atmosphere is now getting a bit darker and seems to be reappearing.
One of Jupiter's stripes that "disappeared" last spring is reappearing – and the disappearance was apparently an illusion created by Jupiter's atmosphere,NASA scientists said.
Scientists noticed earlier this year that the longstanding dark-brown stripe, called the South Equatorial Belt, had turned white, essentially disappearing. Researchers with NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility, the W.M. Keck Observatory and the Gemini Observatory telescope began studying the phenomenon and found the answer likely lies in a cloud deck made up of white ammonia ice that basically obscured the ring.
"The reason Jupiter seemed to 'lose' this band – camouflaging itself among the surrounding white bands – is that the usual downwelling winds that are dry and keep the region clear of clouds died down," said Glenn Orton, a scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "One of the things we were looking for in the infrared was evidence that the darker material emerging to the west of the bright spot was actually the start of clearing in the cloud deck, and that is precisely what we saw."
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