It must be wild to work in a field where new discoveries are made every single day.

Not only that, but at any given time you could grab the most recent images from space and find something you assumed to be fairly predictable is all of a sudden awash with new phenomena.

Which is what’s happened with the large dark spots suddenly visible on Jupiter’s surface.

The “mysterious dark ovals” are each about as big as Earth, and appear on the planet’s polar regions on the ultraviolet spectrum. This on a planet whose Great Red Spot has already stumped astronomers since it was first discovered.

Jupiter is a gas giant with an extremely powerful magnetic field, which scientists believe could be behind the “spot” phenomenon.

A new paper published in Nature Astronomy posits that disturbances high in the atmosphere could be the cause of the dark spots that are now visible in ultraviolet observations.

They were first spotted by Hubble in the late 1990s, but it wasn’t until now that observers suggested “magnetic tornadoes” in the upper atmosphere could be the cause. Researchers believe these could stir up stratospheric haze that forms the oval features near the poles.

The reason they appear dark is simply because they absorb more ultraviolet light than their surroundings, and according to study coauthor Troy Tsubota, could hint at strong forces at work deep into Jupiter’s atmosphere.

“In the first two months, we realized these OPAL images were like a gold mine, in some sense, and I very quickly was able to construct this analysis pipeline and send all the images through to see what we get.”

They believe the ovals, caused by vortices in the ionosphere stirring up the hazy atmosphere, last around a month before dissipating.

“The haze in the dark ovals is 50 times thicker than the typical concentration, which suggests it likely forms due to swirling vortex dynamics rather than chemical reactions triggered by high-energy particles from the upper atmosphere.”

The team, including senior author Michael Wong, hopes that further research will lead to a better understanding of how atmospheric dynamics on Jupiter differ from those on our home planet.

“Studying connections between different atmospheric layers is very important for all planets, whether it’s an exoplanet, Jupiter, or Earth. To me, discoveries like this are significant and interesting not only because it’s something new in the cosmos, but also because they give us fresh ways to think about our atmosphere on Earth.”

Regardless of how different or similar Jupiter is to Earth, there’s no doubt that it keeps astronomers on their toes.

And everyone loves a challenge.

If you thought that was interesting, you might like to read about a second giant hole has opened up on the sun’s surface. Here’s what it means.