2010: The Year Something Weird Happened On Jupiter

A few weeks ago I had heard that something strange was going on with Jupiter. Specifically something in its atmosphere. And ya know the first few things that entered my mind were not good. Inside my paranoid head the dialogue with myself went something like this:

“Holy shit! Jupiter’s atmosphere’s changing!? Wow. Can’t wait to see it through the scope!”
“Wait a minute, isn’t that what happened in that one movie? What was is it called… Hmm… Oh yeah, 2010.”
“2010!”
“And it’s 2010 now.”
“2010: The Year We Make Contact”
“Roy Scheider and Soviets.”
“And uh well, it’s really 2010 now.”
“Yeah, that was the movie where, besides being a less than spectacular follow-up to 2001: A Space Odyessy but a decent flick nonetheless, Jupiter turned itself inside out and became a second sun in our solar system with its own brand of life living on Europa.”
“That’s the one.”
“And it’s 2010 right now…”
“Damn, I really need to find out when Jupiter’s out tonight.”

And so I did find out. It wasn’t that night, but at about 3:00 AM the next morning. The alarm was set and soon enough I was out there with my telescope and a precautionary flashlight just in case any of those pesky back monoliths decided to show up in the dark – nothing good happens when those things rear their not so ugly but mysteriously scary rectangular bodies! Once I trained the scope on Jupiter, I did see what all the fuss was about. It was missing one of its dark bands of clouds that encircle the planet. In all honestly I saw pictures on the internet before hand, but seeing it with my own eyes was pretty neat and reminded me why I like this stuff in the first place. But I have to say, that I like Jupiter better the old way – more dynamical and interesting looking. Anyway, turns out that according to astronomers, this phenomena is not that uncommon and tends to happen in roughly 15 year cycles specifically with this part of the planet, which is officially called, the South Equatorial Belt or SEB. Seems like a pretty big deal to me though, since I’ve known for a long time that 2.5 Earths could fit into The Great Red Spot which is itself surrounded by this cloud band that is now gone. Seems like I should’ve heard about this in the major world news and not some backwater astronomy website. And then I remembered – it’s not of this world, so that’s why, duh!

Photos by: Anthony Wesley

Since that first night, I’ve gone out a few other times just to make sure I don’t see any atmospheric implosions and weird star children-fetuses like in the movie. And plus it’s nice to have the early morning silence not interrupted by that iconic part from Also Sprach Zarathustra and friggin’ black monoliths, but by birds happily singing as the first light of the sun comes up.