Venus has a dense carbon-dioxide atmosphere that creates a surface pressure more than 90 times stronger than Earth’s at sea level and temperatures greater than 450 degrees Celsius, hot enough to melt lead. Though the planet rotates very slowly — a day on Venus lasts 243 Earth-days — its atmosphere travels at speeds of 360 km/hr, whipping around the planet in just four Earth-days. Satellites have spotted an S-shaped vortex with two eyes near each of its poles.

A polar vortex is a gigantic persistent cyclone-like storm hovering high in the atmosphere over a planet’s antipodes. Almost every planet or moon with a substantial atmosphere has been shown capable of possessing one, including Earth.