A Stunning Discovery Made on Saturn

[CyberGuy]

A Stunning Discovery Made on Saturn

There is a monster hurricane-like storm raging on Saturn, and NASA's Cassini spacecraft shot some close-up photos of something never before seen on any planet other than Earth.

Centered on Saturn's south pole, the swirling storm is 5,000 miles across--or two-thirds the diameter of Earth--and has winds blowing clockwise that top 350 miles per hour.

"It looks like a hurricane, but it doesn't behave like a hurricane," said Dr. Andrew Ingersoll, a member of Cassini's imaging team at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena. "Whatever it is, we're going to focus on the eye of this storm and find out why it's there." The ring clouds, which are located about 20 to 45 miles above the center of the storm, are two to five times taller than the clouds of thunderstorms and hurricanes on Earth.

This hurricane on Saturn is different from hurricanes on Earth because it is locked to the pole and does not drift around. Also, since Saturn is a gaseous planet, the storm has formed without an ocean at its base.

Eye-wall clouds are a distinguishing feature of hurricanes on Earth. They form where moist air flows inward across the ocean's surface, rising vertically and releasing a heavy rain around an interior circle of descending air that is the eye of the storm itself. Though it is uncertain whether such moist convection is driving Saturn's storm, the dark "eye" at the pole, the eye-wall clouds and the spiral arms together indicate a hurricane-like system.

Distinctive eye-wall clouds have never been seen on any planet other than Earth. Even Jupiter's Great Red Spot, much larger than Saturn's polar storm, has no eye or eye-wall and is relatively calm at the center.