Giant Meteor Caused Jupiter Fireball

Meteors on other planets

Even when impacts are detected, they can sometimes be misread.

"The meteor flashes are so brief they are easily missed, even in video recordings, or perhaps misidentified as detector noise or cosmic ray hits on imaging devices," said research team member Mike Wong of the University of California at Berkeley.

As for Jupiter's missing cloud belt, Hubble scientists said the space telescope's new photos showed all the warning signs of an impending disappearance of the planet's Southern Equatorial Belt.

The clearing of the ammonia cloud layer should begin with a number of dark spots like those seen by Hubble along the boundary of the south tropical zone.

"The Hubble images tell us these spots are holes resulting from localized downdrafts taking place," Simon-Miller said. "We often see these types of holes when a change is about to occur."

"The SEB last faded in the early 1970s," Simon-Miller added. "We haven't been able to study this at this level of detail before. The changes of the last few years are adding to an extraordinary database on dramatic cloud changes on Jupiter."