U.S. astronomers have detected a cloud of storm hovering above the Saturn moon Titan's arid equator.

The findings published in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature was made possible through the telescope at the Gemini North Observatory, located atop the Mauna Kea mountain in Hawaii. Astronomers saw the two-million-square-mile storm clouds in April 2008.

Astronomer Mike Brown of California Institute of Technology find the formation of the clouds surprising as the icy moon's equator is dry. Gullies, streams and lakes of frozen methane erupt and trigger the clouds of frozen methane, ammonia and water.

The clouds reach up to the moon's south pole, according to astronomer Henry Roe of Lowell Observatory in Arizona.