Saturn is found active with hurricanes over it for the first time! Cassini has captured images of a storm on the planet’s surface. The clouds are found to reach heights spanning tens of kilometers in altitude, as revealed by different wavelengths.
Cassini has captured images of a storm on the surface of Saturn. Different wavelengths reveal the heights of the clouds, which span tens of kilometers in altitude. The hurricane-like storm is spotted swirling at Saturn’s South Pole. It measures approximately 8,047 kilometers wide, which is two-thirds of Earth’s diameter!
Andrew Ingersoll, a member of Cassini’s imaging team at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena described the phenomenon,
It looks like a hurricane, but it doesn’t behave like a hurricane... Whatever it is, we’re going to focus on the eye of this storm and find out why it’s there.
Winds around Saturn’s South Pole are seen swirling clockwise at 560 kilometres per hour! This is recorded by Cassini’s camera for over a three-hour period.
Picture courtesy: AFP/NASA
