NASA Images. Clouds at Saturn’s north pole form huge circular and hexagonal storms. Saturn is a gas giant planet. That means two things: It has a tremendously thick gaseous atmosphere, tens of thousands of kilometers deep (Earth’s is a mere hundred kilometers in depth, for comparison); and it’s big. So when it does things, it does them on an inhumanly vast scale. Even knowing this, though, I was unprepared mentally to comprehend this picture taken by the Cassini spacecraft of clouds circling over Saturn’s north pole.
Completely unprepared: Holy Haleakala! That’s magnificent! Saturn rotates once every 10.5 hours, so its day is less than half the length of ours on Earth. This vortex, as it’s called, is huge: over 2000 kilometers (1200 miles) across, if I’ve determined the scale of this picture correctly. And it’s in the center of a far-larger, even more astonishing structure called Saturn’s north pole hexagon: Image credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute How flippin’ strange is that? Tip o’ the dew shield to Emily Lakdawalla at The Planetary Society blog. Astronomy picture of the day. Ames Platinum Jubilee - 70 Years Of Innovation. Station Spacewalk Game.
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