Today's Image

Close-up views of large hurricane on Saturn

Saturn's North Pole
View Larger | This spectacular, vertigo inducing, false-color image from NASA’s Cassini mission highlights the storms at Saturn’s north pole. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI

Hurricane season has begun on Earth, but Earth isn’t the only world with hurricanes. NASA’s Cassini spacecraft provided scientists with this image a year ago. It was the first close-up, visible-light views of a behemoth hurricane swirling around Saturn’s north pole. The hurricane’s eye is about 1,250 miles (2,000 kilometers) wide, 20 times larger than the average hurricane eye on Earth. Thin, bright clouds at the outer edge of the hurricane are traveling 330 mph(150 meters per second). The hurricane swirls inside a large, mysterious, six-sided weather pattern known as the hexagon.

Andrew Ingersoll, a Cassini imaging team member at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, said:

We did a double take when we saw this vortex because it looks so much like a hurricane on Earth. But there it is at Saturn, on a much larger scale, and it is somehow getting by on the small amounts of water vapor in Saturn’s hydrogen atmosphere.

Scientists will be studying the hurricane to gain insight into hurricanes on Earth, which feed off warm ocean water. Although there is no body of water close to these clouds high in Saturn’s atmosphere, learning how these Saturnian storms use water vapor could tell scientists more about how terrestrial hurricanes are generated and sustained.


Read more about the hurricane at Saturn’s north pole via NASA JPL

Saturn-hexagon
Saturn’s north polar hurricane swirls inside this unique six-sided feature of Saturn known as “the hexagon.” This movie, made from images obtained by the Cassini spacecraft’s imaging cameras, is the first to show the hexagon in color filters, and the first movie to show a complete view from the north pole down to about 70 degrees north latitude. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI/Hampton University
The Rose
View Larger | The spinning vortex of Saturn’s north polar storm resembles a deep red rose of giant proportions surrounded by green foliage in this false-color image from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI
Spring North Pole on Saturn
View Larger | The north pole of Saturn, in the fresh light of spring, is revealed in this color image from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI

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Posted 
June 5, 2014
 in 
Today's Image

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