Courtesy: European Space Agency/MPS Venus Express
While Jupiter stole most of the astronomy headlines in the last two weeks with its well-documented dark spot, a strange, unexplained sight on nearby Venus is also leaving some astronomers scratching their heads.
Images captured by the European Space Agency's Venus Express satellite show a strange brightening of clouds starting July 19th.
The attached slideshow shows a series of images including the Venus Express WMC camera in ultraviolent showing the "bright band" expanding and stretching out into the higher speed wind fields of Venus' upper atmosphere.
With Jupiter the cause of the impact and resulting dark spot seems fairly certain. It was either done by a small asteroid or perhaps a comet. Venus' change in appearance however is a little tougher to pin down.
Leading theories include a potential large scale volcanic event that managed to blast high into Venus' upper atmosphere. Another possibility is a upper atmospheric reaction to a coronal mass ejection or CME from the Sun. Similar cloud changes on Venus have been noted in the past but identifying the cause for those previous events has been fleeting as well.
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