The mightiest planet in the Solar System must have really done something wrong, because it has lost one of its stripes. An amateur astronomer in Australia first spotted the change as Jupiter emerged from the Sun's glare this spring. The entire reddish Southern Equatorial Belt has disappeared. To give some scale, that's a cloud formation about 300,000 miles long and three times as wide as the Earth. If you know where it is, give the IAU a call.
Exactly why this has happened is anyone's guess. The planetary scientists are muttering about changes in heat flow, but for now the real answer is a shrug and a blank look. It's a pity the Galileo spacecraft wasn't around to observe the change. Having a camera on orbit watching stuff like this in real time would cut down a lot on the embarassed shrugging and head-scratching.
Of course, fans of Arthur C. Clarke know what's going on when Jupiter starts acting weird in 2010. It's those pesky Monoliths again.
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