From billowing gravity waves to geomagnetic solar storms, extreme weather is one of our planet's more jaw-dropping phenomena. Advances in technology, such as infrared satellites and Nasa's very own CloudSat, have enabled us to get a closer glimpse at these often unpredictable elemental forces than ever before -- putting us, almost literally, in the eye of the storm.
Here are WIRED's picks of some of the most epic storm images yet captured -- from category four typhoons churning up the Pacific ocean to celestial death storms in deep space.
The eye of Typhoon Dolphin
This image of a category four typhoon tearing its way across the Pacific was captured by Nasa's CloudSat -- a feat that the space agency itself compared to a golfer "hitting a hole in one". This is because the cloud-penetrating radar has a viewing field of only 0.5 miles, whereas most tropical storms reach well over 250 miles wide. However, on May 16, 2015, CloudSat managed to snap an accurate cross-section of the storm's eye, capturing the intense rainfall and convection, and the typhoon's cloud structure.
Massive sunspot solar flares
In October 2014, the Sun underwent a series of intense solar storms, unleashing a number of explosive flares. A giant active sunspot, known as AR 12192, caused the storm -- one of the most powerful types found on the Earth's closest star. Nasa's Solar Dynamics Observatory, a spacecraft that constantly watches the Sun, captured the intergalactic fireworks display to dazzling effect. Sunspots are caused by shifting magnetic fields that are cooler than their surroundings, giving them their dark-blemish appearance.
Martian dust storm
In this cloudy image a dust storm moves across the edge of Mars' north seasonal polar cap; the vast former lava plain named Utopia Planitia. The north polar cap is in the top of the picture, taken during the Mars' late northern winter, and the blurry shape below the storm is composed of gravity-wave clouds, which are caused by changes in the atmosphere's temperature and pressure. Because Mars has such a thin atmosphere -- equivalent to just 1 percent of Earth's -- its hurricanes would be more like a gentle breeze for us, but its dusty surface would result in pretty nasty conditions anyway.
Jupiter's never-ending storm
The Great Red Spot on Jupiter's otherwise sandy-looking surface is one of its distinguishing hallmarks. However, you might be surprised to discover that the angry blemish is the result of an atmospheric storm that has whipped the planet's southern hemisphere for 400 years -- which certainly puts our very British moaning about the weather into some perspective. Rival jet streams mean that the storm is generally confined to the same place, and though the Red Spot is gargantuan enough to swallow up three Earths, it's around half the size it was a century ago.
Celestial death storm
A dying star -- however unfortunate for the star in question -- is a rather spectacular sight to behold, as this image shows. When a star dies, its hot core radiates with ultraviolet light, lending its disintegrating debris a luminescent and strangely pretty sheen. Cosmic dust storms are then kicked up in its wake, as the comets that would have been orbiting the star are violently flung into each other. The celestial death storm shown here, called the Helix Nebula, occurred around 650 light years from Earth, and was jointly captured by Nasa's Spitzer Space Telescope and the Galaxy Evolution Explorer.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
