Gallery: images of storms from space

NASA’s Juno spacecraft caught these stunning swirls of clouds from 7,578 miles above Jupiter. The orbiter started exploring the gas giant in 2016, giving researchers an unprecedented peek into the planet’s churning atmosphere, which is loaded with roiling cloud bands and rotating storms.

Planets aren’t the only celestial bodies that can kick up a tempest. On the sun, regions of magnetic turbulence can spawn towering structures called coronal loops. These twisting arcs of charged gas can stretch so far from the solar surface that ten Earths could fit inside.

Clocking in at some 3,700 miles long, this massive anticyclone churns at the southern edge of Jupiter. Researchers have tracked the sightless “eye” since 1993, watching it change color over time. Citizen scientists Gerald Eichstädt and Seán Doran created this striking image from data the Juno spacecraft captured in 2017.

Mid-summer days on Mars heat the red planet’s surface, turning ice into wispy clouds that are buffeted in the turbulence above the north polar ice cap. Here, the Viking mission witnessed the clouds form tight cyclones that look like the ghosts of the hurricanes we see on Earth.

Here, NASA’s Juno mission reveals the surreal turbulence on Jupiter’s south pole. Multiple cyclones each up to 600 miles across dance in the atmosphere, and new data suggest their roots extend deep below the colorful surface.

Astronaut Ricky Arnold captured the stunning vortex of Hurricane Florence from aboard the International Space Station on September 10, 2018. The storm rapidly swelled in size, prompting evacuation orders across the Carolinas. Scientists say Florence’s intense rainfall and whopping size are likely due to climate change.

Storms on Earth don’t all turn the same way. Thanks to what’s known as the Coriolis effect, cyclones seen from space appear to rotate in different directions depending on which hemisphere is in your field of view. In the north, cyclones seem to turn counterclockwise, like this pair of swirls that formed in 2006 off the southern coast of Iceland. In the Southern Hemisphere, they look like they are turning clockwise.

Saturn’s hexagonal storm is unlike anything else in the solar system. Winds zip around the planet’s north pole in this six-sided jet stream at speeds around 200 miles an hour. Adding to the intrigue, new data from the Cassini spacecraft suggest that the jet stream may be powering a hexagon-shaped vortex seen higher up in Saturn’s atmosphere.

This image may look a bit funny to the eye, but that’s because it’s a three-dimensional projection of Hurricane Alex, which roared through the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. NASA’s Terra satellite captured the data to create this unusual view. As Alex hit the Gulf, the storm swelled and the winds whipped up, causing deadly flooding throughout the region.

Swirling tempests aren’t limited to the seas, as seen in this picture from NASA’s Suomi NPP satellite. In 2014, this late-winter cyclone whirled over the Great Lakes, bringing with it powerful winds, snow, hail, and tornadoes.