Big storm on Saturn:

[The Straight Story]

A couple of weeks ago, amateur astronomers discovered a new storm erupting on Saturn. The accomplished astrophotographer Anthony Wesley got pictures of it, and I wondered to myself when Cassini would snap some shots. Turns out, I didn’t have to wait long! The spacecraft took images of the planet on December 24th, returning — as usual — jaw-dropping pictures of Saturn showing the storm:



This image, taken with a blue filter, shows the storm clearly. The main spot is huge, about 6,000 km (3600 miles) across — half the size of Earth! Including the tail streaming off to the right, the whole system is over 60,000 km (36,000 miles) long.

Curious, I checked out the archive of raw Cassini images, and sure enough pictures were also taken in infrared filters which pick out the gas methane, abundant in Saturn’s atmosphere:



A lot more detail can be seen here! I’m not sure how to interpret this, but it’s interesting to me that in the main oval there’s a spot with less methane on the left, and a bright spot on the right with a faint ring of clouds circling it. The banding on the planet can be spotted more easily in this image as well.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/12/28/a-saturnian-storm-larger-than-worlds/

[ChairmanAgnostic]

1. what did we do to piss it off so badly?

[geardaddy]

2. Pat Robertson, what did you do?!

[The Straight Story]

3. It's global warming, it reaches all the way there....or smokers

;)

[Fumesucker]

5. Nah, it's all Julian Assange's fault..

Well, him and Pvt Manning..

[ClassWarrior]

4. It's a picture of Squidward!

It's a massive promo for the next Spongebob movie, "The Seas of Saturn!!"

:rofl:

NGU.

[old mark]

6. K&R - I wonder if they get snow days.....nt

[Poll_Blind]

7. It doesn't look like a storm, more like an impact or eruption from below.

The trailing tail in the top picture would seem to indicate that whatever it is, is existing against the rotation of the atmosphere/"jet stream"/whatever. Eh, I guess they're the astronomers and I'm not though.

:rofl:

PB