Tag Archive for 'Wind'

An artist’s impression of a tiny Pterodactylus antiquus hatchling struggling against a raging tropical storm, inspired by fossil discoveries. Image credit: Rudolf Hima.

Two Extraordinary Fossils of Immature Pterosaurs Killed by Catastrophic Storm Found in Germany

Sep 5, 2025 by News Staff

Paleontologists at the University of Leicester have examined the 150-million-year-old fossilized skeletons of two highly immature Pterodactylus antiquus...

This image of the Paposo rock was taken by Curiosity’s MAHLI instrument on July 24, 2025. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS.

Curiosity Finds Coral-Shaped Rocks on Mars

Aug 12, 2025 by Natali Anderson

On July 24, 2025, the 4,608th Martian day, or Sol, of the mission, NASA’s Curiosity rover imaged wind-eroded rocks shaped like a piece of coral in the...

Three dust devils can be seen in this image taken at the rim of Jezero Crater by NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover on January 25, 2025. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / SSI.

Perseverance Witnesses Larger Dust Devil Consuming Smaller One on Mars

Apr 3, 2025 by NASA

A Martian dust devil can be seen consuming a smaller one in a series of images taken by a navigation camera aboard NASA’s Perseverance rover. Dust devils...

This diagram shows the structure and motion of the atmosphere of WASP-121b. Image credit: ESO / M. Kornmesser.

Astronomers Map Out 3D Structure of WASP-121b’s Atmosphere

Feb 18, 2025 by News Staff

Ultrahot Jupiters, an extreme class of planets not found in our Solar System, provide a unique window into atmospheric processes. Using four telescope...

Zhu et al. uncovered a nonlinear and boomerang-shape relationship between Saharan dust and tropical cyclone rainfall. Image credit: Enrique.

Study Shows Previously Unknown Link between Saharan Dust Plumes and Tropical Cyclone Rainfall

Jul 25, 2024 by News Staff

According to new research, giant plumes of Saharan dust, transported across the Atlantic Ocean by trade winds, can suppress hurricane formation over the...

This artist’s concept shows what WASP-43b could look like. Image credit: NASA / ESA / CSA / Ralf Crawford, STScI.

Webb Maps Weather on Hot Jupiter WASP-43b

Apr 30, 2024 by News Staff

WASP-43b is cloudy on the nightside and clear on the dayside, with equatorial winds howling around the planet at 8,050 km per hour (5,000 mph). This artist’s...

Toffoli et al. report direct observations of surface waves from a stereo camera system along with concurrent measurements of wind speed during an expedition across the Southern Ocean in the austral winter aboard the South African icebreaker S.A. Agulhas II. Image credit: Alessandro Toffoli.

Strong Winds Drive Formation of Colossal Rogue Waves, Scientists Say

Apr 16, 2024 by News Staff

A rogue wave is a single swell that is much higher than nearby waves, which can damage ships or coastal infrastructure. Ocean waves are among the most...

This illustration depicts findings that Jupiter’s atmospheric winds penetrate the planet in a cylindrical manner and parallel to its spin axis. The most dominant jet recorded by NASA’s Juno is shown in the cutout: the jet is at 21 degrees north latitude at cloud level, but 3,000 km below that, it’s at 13 degrees north latitude. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / SSI / SWRI / MSSS / ASI / INAF / JIRAM / Björn Jónsson / CC BY 3.0.

Atmospheric Winds Penetrate Jupiter in Cylindrical Manner, Planetary Researchers Say

Nov 9, 2023 by News Staff

The violent nature of Jupiter’s atmosphere has long been a source of fascination for scientists. NASA’s Juno spacecraft has had a ringside seat to...

This Webb image of Jupiter shows stunning details of the majestic planet in infrared light. In this image, brightness indicates high altitude. The numerous bright white ‘spots’ and ‘streaks’ are likely very high-altitude cloud tops of condensed convective storms. Aurorae, appearing in red in this image, extend to higher altitudes above both the northern and southern poles of the planet. By contrast, dark ribbons north of the equatorial region have little cloud cover. Image credit: NASA / ESA / CSA / STScI / Ricardo Hueso, UPV / Imke de Pater, UC Berkeley / Thierry Fouchet, Observatory of Paris / Leigh Fletcher, University of Leicester / Michael H. Wong, UC Berkeley / Joseph DePasquale, STScI.

Webb Spots High-Speed Equatorial Jet in Jupiter’s Stratosphere

Oct 19, 2023 by News Staff

The newly-discovered intense (140 m/s) jet is confined to ±3° of Jupiter’s equator, is approximately 4,800 km wide, and is located in the gas giant’s...

Kosec et al. mapped the winds associated with the accretion disk around Hercules X-1, a binary system located 6,600 parsecs (21,526 light-years) away in the constellation of Hercules. Image credit: Jose-Luis Olivares, MIT / D. Klochkov, ESA.

Astronomers Map Colossal ‘Disk Winds’ in Hercules X-1

Apr 12, 2023 by News Staff

Hercules X-1 is an X-ray binary system in which a neutron star is drawing material away from a Sun-like star. This neutron star’s accretion disk is unique...

The dandelion-inspired, wind-dispersed robot. Image credit: Jianfeng Yang / Tampere University.

Researchers Create Dandelion-Inspired Robot Controlled by Power of Light and Wind

Jan 30, 2023 by News Staff

The robot’s design is inspired by the seed of dandelion, resembling several biomimetic features, i.e., high porosity, lightweight, and separated vortex...

Perseverance’s Navigation Camera (Navcam) observations of the direct dust devil encounter: the Navcam scene (the average background image, top panel) and each dust devil image processed to dust amount (five lower panels), masking out only the truly indeterminate areas (gray); the color scale ranges from optical depth, τ = 0 at the bottom (blue) to τ = 0.12 at the top (yellow), and is linear in between; the areas with low signal-to-noise ratio are masked out, and the images also show non-random noise (banding from instrument electronics during readout); the grid on the scene image (top panel) is 5 degrees in local level azimuth and elevation; the darker gray contours are elevation=0 degrees and azimuth=165 degrees. Image credit: Murdoch et al., doi: 10.1038/s41467-022-35100-z.

NASA’s Perseverance Rover Records Sound of Martian Dust Devil

Dec 13, 2022 by News Staff

Dust devils — convective vortices loaded with dust — are common at the surface of Mars, particularly at Jezero crater, the landing site of...

Maurice et al. find that the speed of sound is slower on Mars than on Earth and that, mostly, a deep silence prevails. Image credit: Maurice et al., doi: 10.1038/s41586-022-04679-0.

Perseverance Characterizes Acoustic Environment of Mars

Apr 4, 2022 by News Staff

NASA’s Perseverance rover first recorded Martian sounds on February 19, 2021, the day after its arrival. These sounds fall within the human audible spectrum,...

This infrared image, taken by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, shows an aurora at the southern pole of Saturn. Image credit: NASA / Cassini / VIMS Team / University of Arizona / University of Leicester / JPL / ASI.

Weather Drives Saturn’s Powerful Aurorae, Planetary Scientists Say

Feb 9, 2022 by News Staff

Saturn is unique among planets observed to date in that some of its aurorae are generated by swirling winds within its atmosphere, and not just from the...

This visible-light image of Jupiter was created from data captured on January 11, 2017 using Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3. Near the top, a long brown feature called a ‘brown barge’ extends 72,000 km (nearly 45,000 miles) in the east-west direction. The Great Red Spot stands out prominently in the lower left, while the smaller feature nicknamed Red Spot Jr. (known to Jovian scientists as Oval BA) appears to its lower right. Image credit: NASA / ESA / NOIRLab / NSF / AURA / Wong et al. / de Pater et al. / M. Zamani.

Juno Provides New Information about Jupiter’s Enigmatic Atmospheric Features

Nov 1, 2021 by News Staff

Juno launched on August 5, 2011 and successfully entered Jupiter’s orbit on July 4, 2016. During each of the spacecraft’s 37 passes of Jupiter to date,...

This artist’s concept depicts NASA’s Mars rover Perseverance on the surface of the Red Planet. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

NASA’s Perseverance Rover Records Martian Sounds

Oct 20, 2021 by News Staff

NASA’s Perseverance rover carries two microphones which are directly recording sounds on Mars, including wind gusts, rover wheels crunching over gravel,...

By analyzing images taken by Hubble between 2009 and 2020, Wong et al. found that the average wind speed just within the boundaries of the Great Red Spot, set off by the outer green circle, have increased by up to 8% and exceed 640 km per hour; in contrast, the winds near the storm’s innermost region, set off by a smaller green ring, are moving significantly more slowly; both move counterclockwise. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Michael H. Wong, University of California, Berkeley.

Hubble Measures Horizontal Winds in Jupiter’s Great Red Spot

Sep 28, 2021 by News Staff

Using data from the WFC3/UVIS instrument on board the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, a team of astronomers has measured the horizontal winds in Jupiter’s...

The three main weather patterns on Venus. Image credit: Imamura et al. / JAXA.

Akatsuki Observes Nightside Equatorial Circulation in Atmosphere of Venus

Jul 21, 2021 by News Staff

Venus is well known for its rotating upper atmosphere, which sweeps around the planet once every 4 Earth days. This is in stark contrast to the rotation...

This image shows an artist’s impression of winds in Jupiter’s stratosphere near the planet’s south pole, with the blue lines representing wind speeds; these lines are superimposed on a real image of Jupiter, taken by the JunoCam imager aboard NASA’s Juno spacecraft. Image credit: ESO / L. Calçada / NASA / JPL-Caltech / SwRI / MSSS.

ALMA Detects Strong Winds in Stratosphere of Jupiter

Mar 25, 2021 by News Staff

Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have revealed incredibly powerful winds — with speeds of up to 1,450 kmh...

Hubble images of Saturn taken in 2018, 2019, and 2020 as the planet’s northern hemisphere summer transitions to fall. Image credit: NASA / ESA / STScI / A. Simon / R. Roth.

Hubble Sees Midsummer Atmospheric Changes in Northern Hemisphere of Saturn

Mar 19, 2021 by News Staff

Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope observed Saturn, the second largest planet in our Solar System, in 2018, 2019, and 2020, just after...