Starry Night on Jupiter

What does legendary, long-dead painter Vincent Van Gogh have to do with an Earth-sized storm whose whipping winds top 400 mph? That all depends on your point of view: pragmatically, not much, since Jupiter’s “Little Red Spot,” as it’s known, was only discovered a few years ago. But new, close-up pictures of the Spot returned by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft have revealed a connection Mother Nature may never have intended: it looks a heckuva lot like Van Gogh’s Starry Night. Like, check it out:

Whether or not Van Gogh took his inspiration from an actual starry night — and a not-yet-formed alien storm system, or at least its big brother storm, hundreds of years old and well-known during Van Gogh’s lifetime — is a matter of speculation. Either way, the resemblance is striking.

via Mental Floss