giant Jupiter loses a strip
one on the north is still visible, while the hemisphere Southern seems to have disappeared
LONDON - Surprise in Space: Jupiter is undergoing a new look. The planet loses its characteristic bands, the two bands of dark brown above and below the equatorial zone. If the band is to the north still visible, that seems to be missing in the southern hemisphere in the last pictures that depict Jupiter. The photos were taken last May 9 by an Australian amateur astronomer, who has published on the web . Scientists can not yet explain why the strip is missing. However, the U.S. space agency NASA astronomers suspect that the sudden disappearance may be attributed to some process of overlapping layers of clouds above the planet, writes the science journal New Scientist . A truly spectacular event, but not entirely unexpected. 
dark band - Giove, con un diametro di circa 143 mila chilometri, è il più grande pianeta del sistema solare. È uno degli oggetti più brillanti nel cielo notturno e fu già osservato dagli antichi Romani, che identificarono l'astro con il sovrano degli dei. Nelle immagini risalenti alla fine del 2009 la banda scura nell'emisfero meridionale, la cosiddetta banda equatoriale sud, è ancora chiaramente riconoscibile. Successivamente Giove si è mosso troppo vicino al Sole da non poter essere più osservato dalla Terra. Quando agli inizi di aprile il Pianeta è riapparso dalla luce del Sole, l'anello più a sud era scomparso. Una spiegazione del perchè Giove possiede le due bande scure è da trovarsi nella struttura di nubi the Planet. Probably in the region of the bands lack whitish cloud formations at high altitude, which are prevalent in other regions of Jupiter, said Glenn Orton of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. However, it is not the first time that Jupiter loses the SEB. It is a cyclical event, which is repeated approximately every 15 years and the instability of SEB - an acronym of the South Equatorial Belt - is known to astronomers as early as 1973, when NASA's Pioneer 10 spacecraft observed for the first time planet up close, missing the strip south. Even in the '90s the band had disappeared temporarily. What the experts are asking now is whether and when the strip is missing reappear.
