Cassini Spacecraft Captures Images and Sounds of Big Saturn Storm

[n2doc]

PASADENA, Calif. – Scientists analyzing data from NASA's Cassini spacecraft now have the first-ever, up-close details of a Saturn storm that is eight times the surface area of Earth.

On Dec. 5, 2010, Cassini first detected the storm that has been raging ever since. It appears at approximately 35 degrees north latitude on Saturn. Pictures from Cassini's imaging cameras show the storm wrapping around the entire planet covering approximately 1.5 billion square miles (4 billion square kilometers).

The storm is about 500 times larger than the biggest storm previously seen by Cassini during several months from 2009 to 2010. Scientists studied the sounds of the new storm's lightning strikes and analyzed images taken between December 2010 and February 2011. Data from Cassini's radio and plasma wave science instrument showed the lightning flash rate as much as 10 times more frequent than during other storms monitored since Cassini's arrival to Saturn in 2004. The data appear in a paper published this week in the journal Nature.

"Cassini shows us that Saturn is bipolar," said Andrew Ingersoll, an author of the study and a Cassini imaging team member at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif. "Saturn is not like Earth and Jupiter, where storms are fairly frequent. Weather on Saturn appears to hum along placidly for years and then erupt violently. I'm excited we saw weather so spectacular on our watch."

more

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/whycassini/cassini20110706.html



These false-color images from NASA's Cassini spacecraft chronicle a day in the life of a huge storm that developed from a small spot that appeared 12 weeks earlier in Saturn's northern mid-latitudes.

[krispos42]

1. Oh wow... that is beautiful!

It looks like... hell, I don't know, but it's awesome!

[Deep13]

2. Whoa!

Very cool.

[MilesColtrane]

3. He's just a little gassy.

[Mnemosyne]

4. Beautiful! Glad do not live there though...n/t

[pscot]

5. Incredibly cool

[LongTomH]

6. I remember when Voyager 1 & 2 flew by Saturn

On one of those mission, I forget which, the radio experiment picked up radio noise from the rings: "The sound of Saturn's Rings."

I tuned in to a local NASA cable TV channel which played back the recordings. I was awestruck! Generations of astronomers would have died happy to hear those sounds and see the images from Pioneer 11 and the Voyagers!

I saw almost nothing on the network news. Guess what their biggest story was? "Who shot JR?" (The old Dynasty series!) That's one of the times when my contempt for the media increased exponentially.