Atom & Cosmos

Jovian stripe reappears
New infrared images of Jupiter reveal why one of the giant planet’s most distinctive features, a brown-red stripe just south of the equator, is reemerging after being covered in white for about a year. The images, taken at the Keck observatory atop Hawaii’s Mauna Kea by Mike Wong of the University of California, Berkeley, show that wispy, high-altitude ice clouds that had formed over Jupiter’s southern region are now thinning, allowing more of the stripe to be seen.