Upstream | December 28, 2010 | 11 comments

Gigantic Storm With Huge Tail Erupts on Saturn

source: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/12/saturn-storm-cassini/

Image
pjacobs51
An enormous storm has erupted in Saturn’s northern hemisphere.

Amateurs first sighted the storm earlier this month, but the Cassini spacecraft moved into a good position on Dec. 24 to photograph it from about 1.1 million miles away. Earth received the raw and unprocessed shots today.

The storm has a huge central funnel and a long tail that sweeps around Saturn’s northern hemisphere for tens of thousands of miles. A shot in blue light (left) reveals the extent of the tail, but infrared light (right) shows detail of the storm’s amorphous core. The photos were taken exactly a month after Cassini recovered from a solar-flare-induced error that temporarily silenced the spacecraft from Nov. 2 through Nov. 24.

Saturn’s weather is complex like Jupiter’s, but it’s often difficult to see such storms beneath Saturn’s hazy outer atmosphere, wrote Carolyn Porco, a planetary scientist and leader of Cassini’s imaging team.


http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/12/saturn-storm-cassini/
  1. groups:
    Community,   News and Politics,   Upstream,   Science,   4 more
  2. tags:
    Weather,  Solar System,  Saturn
  3.     
    |

11 comments // Gigantic Storm With Huge Tail Erupts on Saturn

more from Upstream:
from the community

top videos