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November 29, 2012 | 12
Conditions near Earth’s poles can be pretty harsh, but the storms over Saturn’s polar regions blow them away.
NASA’s Cassini spacecraft photographed storm-twisted Saturnian clouds, spun into tufts that resemble loose wool or strands of cotton candy, as the orbiter passed above the giant planet’s northern polar region. The spacecraft acquired the raw, unprocessed image on November 27 from a distance of about 365,000 kilometers—roughly equivalent to the separation between Earth and the moon. Previous surveys by Cassini have found that winds whip through the atmosphere over Saturn’s north pole at more than 500 kilometers per hour—30 percent faster than any gust ever recorded in a cyclone on Earth.
The spiraling vortex pictured here sits within an even more dramatic feature—a giant hexagonal cloud structure, some 25,000 kilometers across, that has persisted for decades over the north pole. The curious polar hexagon was discovered in the 1980s during flybys of Saturn by the twin Voyager spacecraft.
—John Matson
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12 Comments
Add CommentNice image, but what's up with that encompassing hexagonal storm?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is the result of human caused global warming.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo can anyone give us an explanation or hypothesis of the hexagon shaped storm? Why is it a hexagon? What is driving the storm?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI've been curious about this for some time, so I Googled it & found the best info first - Wikipedia has a nice entry with a very interesting reference (2nd link below) illustrating a potential explanation.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn#North_pole_hexagonal_cloud_pattern
Ball, Philip (May 19, 2006). "Geometric whirlpools revealed". Nature. doi:10.1038/news060515-17.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038%2Fnews060515-17
"Bizarre geometric shapes that appear at the centre of swirling vortices in planetary atmospheres might be explained by a simple experiment with a bucket of water but correlating this to Saturn's pattern is by no means certain."
There's also a nice blog posting about the experiment, with photos & videos:
http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2010/2471.html
I guess I must be blind because I don't see anything hexagonal in the pic...even when I zoom in...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHi Wayne - check the links in my previous comment for hex storm images & even a 'video'. The hex storm clouds are about 3 times the radii of the inner clouds shown in the image above.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMore info about Saturn's hexagon
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2010/2471.html
Many astronomical features are hexagonal; craters on the moon, mercury, vespa, iapetus...Some galaxies have hexagonal shapes, and plasma instabilities can be hexagonal as well...This last item is the most likely explanation for these polar "auroral" like features; they are driven by giant electrical birkeland currents that spin (like the ones that connect earth's poles to the sun) and create the diocotron instabilities (they also give off wicked xrays...hmmmm)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSee here:
http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2011/arch11/110310hexagon.htm
http://www.thunderbolts.info/thunderblogs/archives/goodspeed08/012708_hexagonal_craters.htm
PK
jtdwyer: Seems your article was not that conclusive:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Swinney, meanwhile, thinks that the process is unlikely to apply to large-scale flows such as that on Saturn, but might be relevant to smaller-scale phenomena such as tornadoes."
...
I said:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Wikipedia has a nice entry with a very interesting reference (2nd link below) illustrating a potential explanation..."
Never did I claim that the article offered a "conclusive" explanation - so what is your point?
Besides, the quote you selected was merely the counterpoint opinion commonly offered in an unbiased, balanced report. Such a statement does not invalidate the subject of the report.
BTW, "Thunderbolts" is certainly not a definitive source...
Well, personally I'd just like to say thanks to jtdwyer and PlasmaKid for offering those links... saved me a lot of time.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRegardless of which phenomenon is the actual cause of this storm feature, nature never ceases to amaze!
You're welcome.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI just happened to be watching a new NOVA program on PBS, "Earth from Space" (2013). Beginning about minute 33 there is an image of some kind produced using satellite sensors that shows (in high speed) linear bands rotating around Antarctica, then dissipating as a newly directed linear band continues the rotation. The overall shape is not stable but does in effect continuously form a 4-6 sided rotation. The narrator says this flow is called by the Polar Jet. There is also a related Antarctic Circumpolar Current that flows all around Antarctica - unimpeded by land masses. This video is very visually informative - not just this small segment. I highly recommend it!