#a moon of saturn has rains of liquid methane

[andromeda3116]

also like. they found so much stuff out there that it was like "okay, either pluto isn't a planet and we have only eight* planet-planets in the solar system, or there are an uncountably huge number of planets in our solar system, which stretches out to ???? billions of miles away and perhaps even as far as a light-year"

like rewriting the definition of "planet" to exclude pluto was by far the lesser evil, and so by the updated definition of the word, pluto simply wasn't ever a planet to begin with. we just didn't know enough about the outer solar system when we discovered it to know that our definition was inadequate

*something something planet nine??? probably exists? maybe exists? maybe just weird math in the model? absolute hair-pulling nightmare to ever actually confirm or image?? may have been a rogue planet whose own star died billions of years ago and left it still hurtling along in the interstellar void? maybe small ice giant, maybe super-earth that got flung out to the fringes of the solar system by that regina george-ass planet jupiter? something possibly beautiful hiding in the math and invisible against the far stars, or a flaw in our math that makes it all just a fool's errand?

wow pluto reclassification discourse is exhausting. here I thought doing a poll that highlights some of pluto's cool lesser known dwarf planet friends would put things in a context where it can't possibly go in that direction but nope a bunch people really do just hold a hard stance against a classification system entirely out of a sense of nostalgia

[livingforstars]

Titan: Saturn's Smog Moon - September 23rd, 1995.

"The largest moon of Saturn is a rare wonder. Titan is the only one of Saturn's moons with an atmosphere, and one of only two moons in the Solar System with this distinction (Neptune's Triton is the other). Titan's thick cloudy atmosphere is mostly nitrogen, like Earth's, but contains much higher percentages of "smog-like" chemicals such as methane and ethane. The smog may be so thick that it actually rains "gasoline-like" liquids. The organic nature of some of the chemicals found in Titan's atmosphere cause some to speculate that Titan may harbor life! Because of its thick cloud cover, however, Titan's actual surface properties remain mysterious. Voyager 1 flew by in 1980, taking the above picture, and much has been learned from Hubble Space Telescope observations. The Cassini mission scheduled for launch in 1997 will map Titan's surface, helping to solve some of its mysteries."

[just--space]

Titan Seas Reflect Sunlight : Why would the surface of Titan light up with a blinding flash? The reason: a sunglint from liquid seas. Saturn's moon Titan has numerous smooth lakes of methane that, when the angle is right, reflect sunlight as if they were mirrors. Pictured here in false-color, the robotic Cassini spacecraft that orbited Saturn from 2004 to 2017 imaged the cloud-covered Titan in 2014 in different bands of cloud-piercing infrared light. This specular reflection was so bright it saturated one of Cassini's infrared cameras. Although the sunglint was annoying -- it was also useful. The reflecting regions confirm that northern Titan houses a wide and complex array of seas with a geometry that indicates periods of significant evaporation. During its numerous passes of our Solar System's most mysterious moon, Cassini has revealed Titan to be a world with active weather -- including times when it rains a liquefied version of natural gas. via NASA

[spaceadvances]

Why would the surface of Titan light up with a blinding flash? The reason: a sunglint from liquid seas. Saturn's moon Titan has numerous smooth lakes of methane that, when the angle is right, reflect sunlight as if they were mirrors.

Pictured here in false-color, the robotic Cassini spacecraft that orbited Saturn from 2004 to 2017 imaged the cloud-covered Titan in 2014 in different bands of cloud-piercing infrared light. This specular reflection was so bright it saturated one of Cassini's infrared cameras. Although the sunglint was annoying -- it was also useful.

The reflecting regions confirm that northern Titan houses a wide and complex array of seas with a geometry that indicates periods of significant evaporation. During its numerous passes of our Solar System's most mysterious moon, Cassini has revealed Titan to be a world with active weather -- including times when it rains a liquefied version of natural gas.

📷: NASA, JPL-Caltech, U. Arizona, U. Idaho

[islam-defined]

Allah created '"Water" - The Miracle fluid

Allah provided a miracle fluid "Water" for the maintenance of life after spreading the earth as a habitat for living beings.

“……. and He sends down water from the sky …..” [2:22], “We send down water from the sky in perfect measure, causing it to soak into the earth. And We are surely able to take it away” [23:18] + many other verses.

Allah created water that is the basic constituent of life. It is a miracle fluid. Just any one of its form is missing, life is finished. He provided the rain of water on Earth from the sky. Science has tried a lot to discover this miracle liquid in many other place of the universe, but it is still unknown till today. Few examples will the matter more clear:

1. Titan is the satellite of Saturn which is the second largest moon in our solar system. Its has similarities like earth because it has atmosphere (but no oxygen), its has rivers (but not of water, its methane) etc.

2) There is rain of H2SO4 in Venus,

3) and rain of diamonds in Saturn,

4) and rain of liquid helium on Jupiter,

5) and rain of plasma on the sun,

6) and the rain of methane in Saturn,

7) and in some other heavenly bodies or planets there is a rain of rubies and sapphires.

This is all as per the theories from NASA, still unpublished. It is written here just for understanding that rain of water is in our Planet, Earth only, as revealed by Allah for the maintenance of life upon Earth in terms of verse 2:22 

Praise be to Allah. Alone, Lord of the worlds He created (1:1), O Allah keep us stable in your path till death arrives and we die with your name upon our lips (Ameen)

[supernovaa-remnant]

to distract you from your fic, what is your all time favourite planet? and why? :DD

-pluto

asjkdhsjkdhsdjkshdss aughhhh it's like asking me to choose between children </3

on one hand, it's like, the earth is the planet that gave us life. she has been nothing but kind to us. she is our mother, our birthplace, our home. everyone we have ever loved or even known about has existed on this little dot in the universe.

but, at the same time, we would not be here without Jupiter. doesn't Jupiter deserve recognition, too? life would not have formed here without Jupiter.

I feel like there's so much to love about all the planets and the satellites and the meteors and comets. There is just so much to love about everything in the universe, I think, and I've always had difficulties picking favorites.

I love Europa and her sub-surface ocean that has over 3 times the amount of water than the entire surface of Earth. I love Titan and her liquid methane lakes and rains. I love Jupiter and Saturn and Uranus and Neptune and their storms and their mighty and dense atmospheres.

I love Mars and Mercury and our moon and Callisto and all the other geologically dead surfaces of our solar system which give us insights to the solar system's past.

I love Venus and her relatively new surface and thick atmosphere and backwards rotation.

There is just so so much to love, I think

[niroke]

Does anyone have a theory of how witches get water? Do they even need water? There necessarily is water because otherwise Luz wouldn't have survived but where is it from??

The boiling isles have both boiling rain and a boiling ocean, meaning most likely the whole weather cycle is composed of the acid. Which is actually a real thing! Just not for us. Venus has a similar weather cycle as we do which runs off of sulfuric acid, but the rain boils away before it could ever hit the ground. However Saturn's moon Titan (Yes Titan!!) does have a completely functional weather cycle run entirely off of methane. It's liquid in the rain and in Titan's oceans and lakes, vapour in the atmosphere, and even freezes! What's really sad is that it's not going to last, current predictions say that it's only going to be around for 10s of millions of years. Which might sound like a while but dinosaurs were alive for 165 million years and died 65 million years ago. This is to say that it's possible that the "water" cycle could actually be methane, and since we know witches have slight differences biologically like the bile sack it's completely reasonable that this would work. However Luz lived there for months. If the entire water cycle is made up of methane she wouldn't have survived because people really need water, so how is it incorporated in there?? Please tell me your theories this is killing me

[anomellee]

so i am actually obsessed with saturn's moons, like this planet has by far the weirdest fucking moon system.

Titan is the largest of Saturn's moons and one of the largest objects in the solar system. It's actually bigger in size than the planet Mercury! It's also the only place other than Earth that has rain storms and an entire hydrological cycle. But unlike on Earth, the rain and lakes on Titan is made of liquid fucking methane! Here are several images of Titan, including two taken by the Huygens probe of the actual surface of Titan!

Its atmosphere is quite similar to ours, as far as these things go, in that it's mostly made of nitrogen and the surface pressure is only about 50% higher than the standard sea level pressure on Earth. Overall it's the most Earth-like body we've discovered to date. I wouldn't recommend vising Titan though, considering the temperature on the ground is around 90 K (-297.67°F) and the atmosphere contains relatively large amounts of hydrogen cyanide and other extremely toxic chemicals...

Iapetus is Saturn's third largest moon and also utterly bizarre. This moon doesn't have an atmosphere, but it has some really fascinating geological features. Most immediately striking is this strange discoloration that looks almost like mold

But when you look closer, there's also this weird turtle ridge around the equator. That ridge is 1300 km long and 13 km tall!! This is the third tallest mountain-like thing in the entire solar system (the tallest mountain on Earth, measured from the base, is only 4.2 km), and we have no idea how it formed!

Enceladus, another one of my favorites, is a tiny little baby at just 500 km across, but one of the most exciting moons in the solar system. The surface of this moon is made entirely of bright water ice, which probably forms a 30-40 km thick shell beneath which there's a massive salt water ocean!

Geysers near the moon's south pole periodically spew plumes of ice into space. The material ejected from Enceladus goes into orbit around Saturn and forms the planet's E-ring

Janus and Epimetheus are a pair of relatively small (<200 km diameter) moons that are unusual in that they share an orbit with one another. This was thought to be entirely impossible until these two moons were discovered! To be more precise, they don't exactly share a single orbit so much as they occasionally trade orbits. The orbital radii are less that 50 km apart, but they're rarely actually close together because they're usually at different parts in the orbit (kind of like different times of year, if that makes sense). But every four years or so, the two moons line up just right and they swap orbits: the inner moon moves farther out and the outer moon migrates about 50 km inward! I don't know of any intuitive diagrams of this, but it's often illustrated using a "rotating frame" like in this image:

These are some of my favorite parts of the Saturn system. I could go on for hours about how weird and cool this little system is, but I really need to actually go to work lol

[wyrm-in-a-closet]

Science fact of the day- Titan!

While I do dearly love our Luna, there is one moon that I love just a bit more, and that's saturn's Titan. Titan is the second largest moon in our solar system, although for a long time, it was actually thought to be the largest for a very peculiar reason: it has a thick atmosphere. the presence of an atmosphere is very strange because, as i've talked about in other science facts, small bodies are usually unable to hold onto an atmosphere. this is why our moon, as well as every single other moon in our solar system does not have an atmosphere (technically, they have a light collection of particles, but its so thin its practically a vacuum). But Titan? it has an atmosphere- and not just a small little one. it's thicker than earth's. by about 1.5 times. whats even more incredible about this is that because titan has about 1/6th of earth's gravity, this atmosphere is far less compressed compared to earth's, meaning that if the same atmosphre was under earth-like gravity, it would be around 7 or 8 times thicker, iirc. but because it's under low gravity, the atmosphere extends hundreds of kilometers into space- even at a distance of nearly 1000 kilometers, Cassini had to make adjustments to maintain its planned trajectory. This atmosphere is composed mostly of nitrogen (about 95%), and the rest is mostly methane (5%), alongside minute trace gases. the methane is primarily what gives it its haze, and this haze is why early astronomers thought titan was larger than the actual largest moon, Ganymede, because the two are so similar in size.

but there's one more thing that makes titan even more interesting than its unique atmosphere. In our solar system, there are exactly two bodies with stable surface liquid- of course there's Earth, but Titan has it as well. but it's not water. Titan is very far from the sun (about 10 times) and recieves only about 1% of the sunlight that Earth does, and most of this sunlight will never reach the surface as it's scattered by the atmosphere, meaning its extremely cold on the surface. so cold, in fact, that Methane, normally a gas on Earth, condesnses and rains down into rivers and lakes. the largest lake, called the Kraken Mare (badass name btw) is bigger than the caspian sea. its fucking enourmous.

because of Titans many unique traits, scientists really wanna know whats goin on down there. in 1997, Cassini-Huygens launches, a dual part mission. Cassini (my favorite space mission) was an orbiter which studied Saturn, while Huygens fell into Titan's atmosphere and landed on the surface, providing a grand total of 2 hours worth of data. however, we're going back. in 2027, my favorite upcoming space mission, Dragonfly is set to launch towards saturn, and will arrive in 2034. it'll slow down in the atmosphere with a heat shield, and then land using it's drone-style propeller blades. because this thing is built like an RC drone. because of titan's thick atmosphere and low gravity, it's perfect for flying around in. in fact, it's more than 10 times easier to fly around on titan than it is on Earth. Dragonfly will preform a flight roughly ever 2 weeks, during which it will travel several kilometers, flying straight over otherwise difficult obstacles such as sand dunes and mountain ridges. it'll study the chemisty of Titan's atmosphere and surface, including looking for signs of life. While life as we know it lives in water, it's somewhat possible that life could live on titan using methane as its solvent, and breathing hydrogen gas in order to gain energy. it's entirely speculative but Dragonfly aims to look for whether or not its even a possibilty, or if we're lucky, observe signs that it does exist.

[amitstrom-blog]

What it’s like to ride the sub that dives into Titan’s seas

Titan, the largest moon of Saturn, is one of the most intriguing destinations in the solar system. It has a thick atmosphere, a surface covered with lakes and rivers of liquid methane and ethane, and a hidden ocean of water beneath its icy crust. It is also the only other world besides Earth where rain and weather cycles occur.To explore this alien world, NASA and ESA have launched the Titan…

[apod]

2022 March 27

Titan Seas Reflect Sunlight Image Credit: NASA, JPL-Caltech, U. Arizona, U. Idaho

Explanation: Why would the surface of Titan light up with a blinding flash? The reason: a sunglint from liquid seas. Saturn's moon Titan has numerous smooth lakes of methane that, when the angle is right, reflect sunlight as if they were mirrors. Pictured here in false-color, the robotic Cassini spacecraft that orbited Saturn from 2004 to 2017 imaged the cloud-covered Titan in 2014 in different bands of cloud-piercing infrared light. This specular reflection was so bright it saturated one of Cassini's infrared cameras. Although the sunglint was annoying -- it was also useful. The reflecting regions confirm that northern Titan houses a wide and complex array of seas with a geometry that indicates periods of significant evaporation. During its numerous passes of our Solar System's most mysterious moon, Cassini has revealed Titan to be a world with active weather -- including times when it rains a liquefied version of natural gas.

∞ Source: apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap220327.html

[merelygifted]

NASA's Titan Dragonfly will touch down on a field of dunes and shattered ice | Space

The exploration of Saturn's largest moon Titan is set to take to the sky.

NASA's Dragonfly mission to Saturn's largest moon will touch down on a terrain of dunes and shattered, icy bedrock, according to a new analysis of radar imagery from the Cassini spacecraft.

Launching in 2027, Dragonfly is a rotorcraft that will arrive in 2034 and explore Titan from the air. Its range will be far greater than that of a wheeled rover, with Dragonfly capable of covering around 10 miles (16 kilometers) in each half-hour flight, according to NASA. Over the span of its two-year mission it will explore an area hundreds of miles or kilometers across. However, before taking to the sky on its own, Dragonfly must first arrive on Titan under a parachute, soft-landing on frozen terrain that is hidden from easy viewing by the dense hydrocarbon smog that fills the moon's atmosphere.

Dragonfly's landing site will be the Shangri-La dune field, close to the 50-mile-wide (80 kilometers) crater, Selk. This region was imaged by NASA's Cassini spacecraft during its mission to Saturn between 2004 and 2017, and a team of scientists led by planetary scientist Léa Bonnefoy of Cornell University has taken a new look at that data to produce the most accurate assessment of Dragonfly's proposed landing site so far.

"Dragonfly … is going to a scientifically remarkable area," Bonnefoy said in a statement (opens in new tab). "Dragonfly will land in an equatorial, dry region of Titan. It rains liquid methane sometimes, but it is more like a desert on Earth where you have dunes, some little mountains and an impact crater."  ...

[captainpotassium]

Titan Seas Reflect Sunlight via NASA https://ift.tt/SaREW8b

Why would the surface of Titan light up with a blinding flash? The reason: a sunglint from liquid seas. Saturn's moon Titan has numerous smooth lakes of methane that, when the angle is right, reflect sunlight as if they were mirrors. Pictured here in false-color, the robotic Cassini spacecraft that orbited Saturn from 2004 to 2017 imaged the cloud-covered Titan in 2014 in different bands of cloud-piercing infrared light. This specular reflection was so bright it saturated one of Cassini's infrared cameras. Although the sunglint was annoying -- it was also useful. The reflecting regions confirm that northern Titan houses a wide and complex array of seas with a geometry that indicates periods of significant evaporation. During its numerous passes of our Solar System's most mysterious moon, Cassini has revealed Titan to be a world with active weather -- including times when it rains a liquefied version of natural gas.

(Published March 27, 2022)

[deadsquidstudios]

Briefly breaking out of my current hyperfixation on Transformers to bring you more mooninite nonsense

Remember Nox from my last post about these guys? Here’s a short crappy comic about him featuring a newly-hatched Ig.

In my headcanon (well, it’s arguably more of a giant fan ‘verse than a headcanon but that’s a story for another time) the Lunar War that Cliff apparently fought in was a war between Earth’s moon and invading forces from Saturn’s moon Titan. Why use Titan, you ask? Well, because it’s a really cool moon and also because there’s a particular aspect of it that feels right out of an ATHF episode: Titan has lakes of liquid methane. AKA, lakes of liquid FART. It also rains liquid methane on Titan.

Anyway, so...Ig hatched out at the very tail end of the war. Literally on the same day that his mother (who I should probably post a ref sheet of at some point, she was a high ranking military official) was killed in battle. Now, Nox has already had a very rough life—he was forced into a position of power at the young age of 16 when his and Cliff’s parents were killed by the Titanians in an act that set off the Lunar War. He constantly has to deal with an uncooperative “upper class” who all seem determined to undermine every effort he makes to improve living conditions for the less fortunate, and on top of that they keep trying to weasel their way out of pulling their own weight in the war effort. He barely gets any sleep, he has horrible anxiety and his self esteem is in the toilet, and now he’s also got to raise his only child alone. Which is going to be very difficult because he’s basically always busy with trying to keep lunar society from imploding. Add to that the stress of constantly being under intense scrutiny from the less-than-respectable Lunar press (which basically consists entirely of yellow journalism and sensationalist tabloid nonsense), and his tendency to put everyone else’s needs before his own to the point of it being detrimental to him, and you can already see that the poor guy is in for a very difficult time in the coming months. Being king of the moon fucking sucks.

Meanwhile, Ignignokt, being a literal newborn at this time, could not possibly care less.

...Why do I spend so much time and effort writing this stuff?

[loverofpiggies]

My Planetary kickstarter is about to begin!

Click through for a link to follow it, so you’ll be notified when it begins!

Hey guys! I’m going to launch a kickstarter Wednesday, March 10th, with some designs I’ve been working on in secret for a while! I’m a big astronomy nerd, and before doing full time art, my plan was to be an Astronomer. Although that didn’t pan out, my love for Astronomy never stopped, and I’ve spent the last few months designing, and redesigning enamel pins, based on each of the planets! (It’s taken a while, art block and all that, but I’m proud to say they’re done!)

To advertise the kickstarter, I’m revealing information of each pin as the days count down! Starting from the closest planets to the sun, to the ones farthest away! Of course, you can see all my designs on my kickstarter page, but I’ll still happily reveal them daily for you! This is planet 6/8, which means we’re getting close to the opening of the kickstarter! But until then, let’s learn a little more about Saturn.

Info About Saturn!

Saturn is the second largest planet in the solar system, and has gigantic, breathtaking rings that no other planet can claim. Although all other gas giants in our solar system have rings- including Jupiter! The rings are very thin and hard to see. Not this ringed wonder! The rings are gigantic, made mostly of rocks, ice and dust. It has 82 moons at least, and its largest moon Titan, is also larger than Mercury. Also, Titan is REALLY cool, and has rivers, weather, and lakes on it's surface, something no other object in the solar system can boast having, besides earth. Suuure, the rain and water is made of methane, but, with temperatures around -296F (-182C), you wouldn't see liquid H20 anywhere on the surface.

Back to Saturn! Saturn is the only planet in the solar system less dense than water, meaning it would absolutely float if put in a giant bathtub! The core might be dense, but the surrounding gases are so light, they make up for it.

A very interesting part of Saturn as well, is the strange hexagonal shape at Saturn's north pole. Discovered in 1981 by the Voyager mission, the hexagon has existed for at least 40 years. No such shape exists at the south pole, making the Saturn hexagon a very unique shape within our solar system, on any planet!

Check out the Kickstarter here! Click ‘Notify me on launch’ to get an email when it’s available!

[nasa]

A Tour of Storms Across the Solar System

Earth is a dynamic and stormy planet with everything from brief, rumbling thunderstorms to enormous, raging hurricanes, which are some of the most powerful and destructive storms on our world. But other planets also have storm clouds, lightning — even rain, of sorts. Let’s take a tour of some of the unusual storms in our solar system and beyond.

Tune in May 22 at 3 p.m. for more solar system forecasting with NASA Chief Scientist Jim Green during the latest installment of NASA Science Live: https://www.nasa.gov/nasasciencelive.

1. At Mercury: A Chance of Morning Micrometeoroid Showers and Magnetic ‘Tornadoes’

Mercury, the planet nearest the Sun, is scorching hot, with daytime temperatures of more than 800 degrees Fahrenheit (about 450 degrees Celsius). It also has weak gravity — only about 38% of Earth's — making it hard for Mercury to hold on to an atmosphere.

Its barely there atmosphere means Mercury doesn’t have dramatic storms, but it does have a strange "weather" pattern of sorts: it’s blasted with micrometeoroids, or tiny dust particles, usually in the morning. It also has magnetic “tornadoes” — twisted bundles of magnetic fields that connect the planet’s magnetic field to space.

2. At Venus: Earth’s ‘Almost’ Twin is a Hot Mess

Venus is often called Earth's twin because the two planets are similar in size and structure. But Venus is the hottest planet in our solar system, roasting at more than 800 degrees Fahrenheit (430 degrees Celsius) under a suffocating blanket of sulfuric acid clouds and a crushing atmosphere. Add to that the fact that Venus has lightning, maybe even more than Earth. 

In visible light, Venus appears bright yellowish-white because of its clouds. Earlier this year, Japanese researchers found a giant streak-like structure in the clouds based on observations by the Akatsuki spacecraft orbiting Venus.

3. At Earth: Multiple Storm Hazards Likely

Earth has lots of storms, including thunderstorms, blizzards and tornadoes. Tornadoes can pack winds over 300 miles per hour (480 kilometers per hour) and can cause intense localized damage.

But no storms match hurricanes in size and scale of devastation. Hurricanes, also called typhoons or cyclones, can last for days and have strong winds extending outward for 675 miles (1,100 kilometers). They can annihilate coastal areas and cause damage far inland.

4. At Mars: Hazy with a Chance of Dust Storms

Mars is infamous for intense dust storms, including some that grow to encircle the planet. In 2018, a global dust storm blanketed NASA's record-setting Opportunity rover, ending the mission after 15 years on the surface.

Mars has a thin atmosphere of mostly carbon dioxide. To the human eye, the sky would appear hazy and reddish or butterscotch colored because of all the dust suspended in the air. 

5. At Jupiter: A Shrinking Icon

It’s one of the best-known storms in the solar system: Jupiter’s Great Red Spot. It’s raged for at least 300 years and was once big enough to swallow Earth with room to spare. But it’s been shrinking for a century and a half. Nobody knows for sure, but it's possible the Great Red Spot could eventually disappear.

6. At Saturn: A Storm Chasers Paradise

Saturn has one of the most extraordinary atmospheric features in the solar system: a hexagon-shaped cloud pattern at its north pole. The hexagon is a six-sided jet stream with 200-mile-per-hour winds (about 322 kilometers per hour). Each side is a bit wider than Earth and multiple Earths could fit inside. In the middle of the hexagon is what looks like a cosmic belly button, but it’s actually a huge vortex that looks like a hurricane.

Storm chasers would have a field day on Saturn. Part of the southern hemisphere was dubbed "Storm Alley" by scientists on NASA's Cassini mission because of the frequent storm activity the spacecraft observed there. 

7. At Titan: Methane Rain and Dust Storms

Earth isn’t the only world in our solar system with bodies of liquid on its surface. Saturn’s moon Titan has rivers, lakes and large seas. It’s the only other world with a cycle of liquids like Earth’s water cycle, with rain falling from clouds, flowing across the surface, filling lakes and seas and evaporating back into the sky. But on Titan, the rain, rivers and seas are made of methane instead of water.

Data from the Cassini spacecraft also revealed what appear to be giant dust storms in Titan’s equatorial regions, making Titan the third solar system body, in addition to Earth and Mars, where dust storms have been observed.

8. At Uranus: A Polar Storm

Scientists were trying to solve a puzzle about clouds on the ice giant planet: What were they made of? When Voyager 2 flew by in 1986, it spotted few clouds. (This was due in part to the thick haze that envelops the planet, as well as Voyager's cameras not being designed to peer through the haze in infrared light.) But in 2018, NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope snapped an image showing a vast, bright, stormy cloud cap across the north pole of Uranus.

9. At Neptune: Methane Clouds

Neptune is our solar system's windiest world. Winds whip clouds of frozen methane across the ice giant planet at speeds of more than 1,200 miles per hour (2,000 kilometers per hour) — about nine times faster than winds on Earth.

Neptune also has huge storm systems. In 1989, NASA’s Voyager 2 spotted two giant storms on Neptune as the spacecraft zipped by the planet. Scientists named the storms “The Great Dark Spot” and “Dark Spot 2.”

10. It’s Not Just Us: Extreme Weather in Another Solar System

Scientists using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope made a global map of the glow from a turbulent planet outside our solar system. The observations show the exoplanet, called WASP-43b, is a world of extremes. It has winds that howl at the speed of sound, from a 3,000-degree-Fahrenheit (1,600-degree-Celsius) day side, to a pitch-black night side where temperatures plunge below 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit (500 degrees Celsius).

Discovered in 2011, WASP-43b is located 260 light-years away. The planet is too distant to be photographed, but astronomers detected it by observing dips in the light of its parent star as the planet passes in front of it.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com.