Massive Hurricane Raging on South Pole!

[Babbler]

... of Saturn.

Huge 'hurricane' rages on Saturn
A hurricane-like storm, two-thirds the diameter of Earth, is raging at Saturn's south pole, new images from Nasa's Cassini space probe reveal.

Measuring 5,000 miles (8,000km) across, the storm is the first hurricane ever detected on a planet other than Earth.

Scientists say the storm has the eye and eye-wall clouds characteristic of a hurricane and its winds are swirling clockwise at 350mph (550km/h).

However, unlike Earth hurricanes it seems stuck at the pole, not drifting.

"It looks like a hurricane, but it doesn't behave like a hurricane," Dr Andrew Ingersoll, a member of Cassini's imaging team at the California Institute of Technology said. "Whatever it is, we're going to focus on the eye of this storm and find out why it's there."

Though Jupiter's Great Red Spot storm moves counter-clockwise, and is far bigger than the storm on Saturn, it does not have the eye and eye-wall that mark out a hurricane.

We've never seen anything like this before. It's a spectacular-looking storm
Michael Flasar, Nasa astrophysicist
An Earth hurricane's eye and eye-walls form when warm, moist air flows inwards across an ocean's surface and rapidly rises vertically, dropping heavy rain in a circular band around descending air in the eye.

But Saturn is a gaseous planet therefore this storm does not have an ocean at its base.

The Saturn storm is bigger not only in diameter than an Earth hurricane, but in height too, with a ring of huge clouds towering 20-45 miles (30-70km) above the well-developed eye - two to five times higher than in storms on Earth.

Unknown phenomenon

One Nasa scientist, Michael Flasar, told Reuters news agency that the storm looked just like water swirling down a bath plug hole, only on a colossal scale. "We've never seen anything like this before," Mr Flasar said. "It's a spectacular-looking storm."

Fourteen frames of the storm were captured by the Cassini spacecraft over the course of three hours on 11 October 2006.

Cassini was passing about 210,000 miles (340,000km) from the ringed planet as it continues its exploration of Saturn and its moons.

Cassini entered into orbit around Saturn on 1 July 2004. Later that year, it released the piggybacked Huygens probe towards the planet's largest moon, Titan.

Huygens touched down on Titan on 14 January 2005, sending back data on the moon's atmosphere, weather and its surface.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a co-operative project of the US space agency (Nasa), the European Space Agency (Esa) and the Italian Space Agency (Asi).

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/6135450.stm

Published: 2006/11/10 11:57:27 GMT

© BBC MMVI

 

[Xanikk999]

Interesting. But then at the same time not so interesting.

 

[skadistic]

Thery keep showing it on FOX. Realy cool stuff.


Space is so cool.

 

[Tank_Guy#3]

That's probably a common occurance on Saturn, as it is much bigger than the Earth.

 

[Masquerouge]

I thought Jupiter's Red Eye was a storm very like a hurricane?

 

[Fugitive Sisyphus]

I thought Jupiter's Red Eye was a storm very like a hurricane?

I think the article meant that it was the first storm that was discovered using instruments that are not on earth.

Measuring 5,000 miles (8,000km) across, the storm is the first hurricane ever detected on a planet other than Earth.

 

[emzie]

Zomg! It's The Day After Tommarow!!!!!!!!

 

[GoodEnoughForMe]

Zomg! It's The Day After Tommarow!!!!!!!!

That's what I was thinking. Commence bad acting...now.

 

[Urederra]

Zomg! It's The Day After Tommarow!!!!!!!!

Yep, just the same as the poles of Mars shrinking. You can't say it is antrophogenic, though.

 

[Masquerouge]

I think the article meant that it was the first storm that was discovered using instruments that are not on earth.

I'm not sure that's the correct interpretation...

 

[Ansar]

Interesting... and pretty cool.

Got me when I saw

... of Saturn.

 

[Eran of Arcadia]

Science is so cool.

 

[Fugitive Sisyphus]

I'm not sure that's the correct interpretation...

:shrug: No other interpretation makes sense.

 

[EdwardTking]

Thery keep showing it on FOX. Realy cool stuff.


Space is so cool.

This reads like a substitute therapy for covering
the aftermath of an election their side did not win.

Next week: watching grass grow

Next week: watching paint dry

Next week: waiting for protons to decay.

 

[Sidhe]

Science is so cool.

Even genetics? Don't let the fudnies hear you say that

That's great, I'm off to find a bit more about it if I can.

EDIT:

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/061109_monster_storm.html

A short article followed by an even shorter video image, if anyones interested.

A freaky storm two-thirds the diameter of Earth and unlike anything ever seen has been spotted on Saturn.

The tempest, some 5,000 miles wide (8,000 kilometers), has an oddly human-looking hurricane-like eye [image]. But it is very different from a terrestrial hurricane, scientists said today.

NASA's Cassini spacecraft photographed the huge storm. It swirls with 350 mph winds at the ringed planet's south pole. It has a remarkably well-defined eye ringed by clouds that soar 20 to 45 miles high (30 to 75 kilometers), or up to five times taller than hurricane clouds on Earth.

"It looks like a hurricane, but it doesn't behave like a hurricane," said Andrew Ingersoll, a member of Cassini's imaging team at the California Institute of Technology. "Whatever it is, we're going to focus on the eye of this storm and find out why it's there."

The storm's eye is clear of clouds, as with a hurricane on Earth. And the eye-wall clouds are also similar to those that surround the eye of a storm here. Researchers don't know if rising, moist air is fueling the clouds, as in a normal hurricane. But the storm's eye, eye-wall and spiral arms are all "hurricane-like," they say.

Yet this storm rotates around Saturn's south pole—astronomers say the pole seems to be within the storm's eye and the system seems locked in place.

Other gas-planet storms, like the Red Spot on Jupiter and many smaller storms on both Saturn and Jupiter, do not have eyes.

This newfound storm's eye offers a window into Saturn.

"The clear skies over the eye appear to extend down to a level about twice as deep as the usual cloud level observed on Saturn," said Kevin Baines of Cassini's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "This gives us the deepest view yet into Saturn over a wide range of wavelengths, and reveals a mysterious set of dark clouds at the bottom of the eye."

Previous observations have shown that Saturn's south pole is warmer than other parts of the planet by about 4 degrees Fahrenheit.

"The winds decrease with height, and the atmosphere is sinking, compressing and heating over the south pole," said Richard Achterberg, a member of Cassini's composite infrared spectrometer team at NASA's Goddard Spaceflight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

http://www.space.com/php/video/player.php?video_id=MonsterSaturnStorm

 

[Irish Caesar]

I thought Jupiter's Red Eye was a storm very like a hurricane?

It doesn't have an eye.

This one does.

That's all.