Intense storms seen on Uranus for first time ever

Extreme storms are raging over the Uranus with huge cloud systems which are so bright to give a detailed look into the planet’s hazy blue green atmosphere.

Eight large storms have been detected by Imke de Pater, professor and chair of astronomy at the University of California, Heidi Hammel of the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy and his team on the Uranus’s Northern hemisphere with the aid of the Keck Observatory.

The brightest storm ever to be seen on the blue planet is at 2.2 microns, a wavelength which senses clouds just underneath the tropopause where the pressure is half of the pressure on Earth’s surface i.e. 300 to 500 mbar. The storm alone attributed for 30% of all light reflected by the rest of the planet at this wavelength.

According to Larry Sromovsky, a planetary scientist at the University of Wisconsin, the storm could be linked to a vortex in the deeper atmosphere much akin to the two large cloud complexes seen during the equinox.