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NASA / JPL-Caltech / SSI
Saturn's northern storm marches through the planet's atmosphere in the top right of this false-color mosaic from NASA's Cassini spacecraft.
"Over the past year, a great disquiet has swept across the face of Saturn..." It sounds like the beginning of a science-fiction movie, but it's actually the latest missive from Carolyn Porco, head of the imaging team for the Cassini mission to Saturn. Today, Porco and her colleagues presented a visual chronicle of the largest Saturnian storm in more than a decade.
The storm was first noticed almost a year ago, as a spot near the line between day and night on the northern hemisphere. Since then, it's grown into a wide, bright band stretching around the entire planet.
"With a 200-day interval of intense, hissing convection, it holds the record as the longest-lasting Saturn-encircling storm ever," Porco writes. "And it has become the largest by far ever observed on the planet by an interplanetary spacecraft, giving us an unparalleled opportunity to study in great depth the subtle changes on the planet that preceded the storm's formatin and the mechanisms involved in its development."
The imaging team has bumped up the colors on a few of the images, like the one shown above, but the true-color images taken over the course of the past year tell a story that's just as dramatic.
NASA / JPL-Caltech / SSI
Images from Cassini show the evolution of a giant Saturnian storm over the course of months.
It's been 14 years and a month since Cassini was launched, and for seven and a half years it's been observing Saturn and many of its 60-plus moons. That puts Cassini right up there with the Mars rovers among NASA's most successful interplanetary missions. "And with any luck, there'll be a great deal more to come," Porco writes.
More from Cassini:
- Rounding up Saturn's moons
- Saturnian moons merge into a quintet
- A double scoop of Saturn's moons
- It's a Saturnian moonapalooza!
- Happy holidays from Saturn's moons
- Slideshow: Cassini's greatest hits
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Leave a Comment:
Super. Missions like Cassini never cease to amaze me :)
I've met Carolyn; she's intelligent and articulate. Kudos to her and her team for some spectacular pictures and scientific data.
Cassini is truly a fantastic return on the investment of our tax dollars. Would that we spent more money on increasing basic scientific knowledge and less on trying to kill people and force our perspectives on others.
Carolyn Porco is my heroine - intelligent and well spoken. I still remember her words on a TV programme i saw once - "It's almost like the universe wants to know to know itself" when refering to the humankind's scientific quest to study the universe and find their place in it.
Oh, and she's good looking too.
"My definition of an interesting universe one that has the capacity to study --Stephen Eastmond
"I've met Carolyn; she's intelligent and articulate"......and there's so few of us left;-)
looks like the saturnians are having some sort of dragrace and that's the dust being kicked up.
Saturnian Global Warming?
So is there a chance of Saturn having a spot hang around for awhile?
Actually the storm disappated in June of this year.
Saturn is one of the most beautiful objects I have ever seen in my 5 inch Takahashi Refracting Telescope, it will Wow You the first time you see it. You don’t have to have a big telescope to see Saturn, all you would need is a 60mm scope at a power of about 50 to get a look at it, and of cores if you want to see more you will have to increase the aperture and power of the scope.
Have a good day Tom And Lyn
Next time you complain about our Earth-bound weather imagine that storm hitting you. Our weather systems pale in comparison.
Really impressed by Cassini, what a great investment, I hope we have many more to come!
Looks like something plowing through the atmosphere of Saturn. They call it a 'storm' but no one really knows. We just watch and learn nothing. . When God made the gas giants, we know why.
nwmick - "We just watch and learn nothing."
the tide goes in. the tide goes out. you can't explain that.
Well yes I can. It's a dumb comment.
it's big of you to admit it. bravo.