Starship Asterisk*

Saturn Storm Panoramas

Explanation: These tantalizing panoramas follow a remarkable giant storm encircling the northern hemisphere of ringed planet Saturn. Still active, the roiling storm clouds were captured in near-infrared images recorded by the Cassini spacecraft on February 26 and stitched into the high resolution, false-color mosaics. Seen late last year as a prominent bright spot by amateur astronomers as Saturn rose in predawn skies, the powerful storm has grown to enormous proportions. Its north-south extent is nearly 15,000 kilometers as it now stretches completely around the gas giant's northern hemisphere some 300,000 kilometers. Taken about one Saturn day (11 hours) apart, the panoramas show the head of the storm at the left and cover about 150 degrees in longitude. Also a source of radio noise from lightning, the intense storm may be related to seasonal changes as Saturn experiences northern hemisphere spring.

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Well....the storms do make saturn more visually interesting.Although i guess it does depend on just 'how' you're looking.

Saturn, my favorite planet.
This image in false color and high resolution is very interesting.
Has the storm 3 eyes?

NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope recently found that thunderstorms on earth shoot out anti-matter into space. Has this instrument been used to study these huge storms on Saturn as well? Thanks for sharing these APOD's. They're fantastic!

The blue spot on the right of the panorama remind me of the red spot on Jupiter.

Amazing photos and the false-color interpretation is wonderfully beautiful!!

Love your site and have looked at it daily for years. First thing every day.

I'm a canoer. That storm on Saturn looks a lot like an old mossy stump underwater with the river swirling over it.

Not sure what the two zoomed images at the top are supposed to mean but what's really strange is the pattern of their touching edges almost match perfect, even tough it appears they are from two different sections of the storm.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrcVqtmu ... r_embedded[/youtube]

The patterns appear to be a von Karman vortex street.

I'm not a scientist but wonder if there is a geometric relationship between the latitudes of these Saturnian storms and the latitudes of regions of sun spot occurrences? I seem to recall from my limited understanding of spherical shell structure theory the latitudes of stress reversals displaying a possible similar latitudinal consistency relative to load conditions as well. Anyone please relieve me of my ignorance?

A day for to remember.
Atlantis mission and the end of space shuttles.

Perk Cartel wrote:
I'm not a scientist but wonder if there is a geometric relationship between the latitudes of these Saturnian storms and the latitudes of regions of sun spot occurrences?

Few sun spots are at this high (~ 35º) a latitude.

Sun spots also have a basic magnetic dipole structure.

Wow, if Saturn looked like this when it was imaged in RGB, it would surely be my favorite planet! Now it is my second favorite planet after colorful planet Jupiter. Number three on my list is, I guess - well, it's a tie between Mars and sky-blue Neptune!

Ann

Ann wrote:
Wow, if Saturn looked like this when it was imaged in RGB, it would surely be my favorite planet! Now it is my second favorite planet after colorful planet Jupiter. Number three on my list is, I guess - well, it's a tie between Mars and sky-blue Neptune!

Wow far out man Terrific images. They are highly colourful and take me back to my psychedelic younger days (well OK I never was a hippy, but was in spirit ). Loved "the biggest, baddest storm observed on Saturn since 1990" description in the Cassini news that was brought up through the 'giant storm encircling' link in the explanation.

The images of the storm that are seen through the links in the explanation are superb. With ever increasing light pollution and often cloudy conditions it is a good night where I am if I can see by eye more than just a few of the brightest stars and some planets. Such excellent views from the Cassini spacecraft and earth-based telescopes are always a treat.

These are gorgeous. I want to commission a painting of them, redo a room to match, live with, and in, these colors and the vibrancy of these gorgeous images.

owlice wrote:...live with, and in...

I take it this picture goes beyond the 'ooooooooooooh' factor

It's got a whole lot of ooooooooooooooooooh factor. It's... gorgeous. A four-foot-long painting of it would be lovely. Or poster; the HiRISE images I love so much call out for texture, I think, so I would like them in acrylic or oil, but this... this might be fine printed.