Keeping An Eye On Cassini
Apparently, the planet Saturn is keeping an eye on NASA's Cassini probe.
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. 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.
We strongly suspect that the planet is very suspicious of NASA's intentions and is watching closely.
"Perhaps the most likely option is to leave Cassini in a long-lived orbit that would have little to no risk of ever hitting anything," Mitchell said. "Another is to impact Saturn like Galileo did at Jupiter, although there are some complications with this one."
By Bird Dog, Thursday, 9 November , 2006 @ 6:21 pm
It’s that darn global warming again
By crosspatch, Thursday, 9 November , 2006 @ 6:45 pm
I say we send a big stick to Saturn and poke it and see if it blinks.
By Carl, Thursday, 9 November , 2006 @ 8:38 pm
AAAAHHHHHH!!!! CBS has infiltrated Saturn!!!!! Flee, flee while you still can!!!