Saturn Has a Warm Pole

Artifex writes "Astronomers using infrared imaging capabilities at Keck Observatory in Hawaii have discovered that Saturn's "south" pole is warm - the first warm pole detected in the solar system. "

Comments

Better

[QMO]

I thought that this article was interesting in that it gave the information, explained that the information was incomplete, explained that the information was incompatible with some common ideas about how things work, and didn't try to scare me into anything.

I didn't see any "as many as" or "could be the most" or even "may destroy civilization as we know it."

Maybe if there were more political overtones to this topic the article would be more normal?

Re:Better

[youknowmewell]

Volcano that is conveniently located at or near the pole.

Re:Better

[battlesharrp]

Possibly a volcano...
But don't you have to have a mostly solid(or at least plastic-y like the mantle) surface to have something resembling a volcano?

Warm pole?

[base3]

I swear, sometimes the jokes just write themselves!

I know where this came from

[AtariAmarok]

Didn't this come from the book of "Roman God Pickup Lines" ?

It's all relative?

[Bucky_the_AV_Guy]

While I appreciate this is the first planet in the solar system to display this - is it not all relative? The scientists that found this vortex did not estimate the temperature at the pole. Saturn has to be by and large pretty bloody cold. The fact that the pole is warmer than the rest of the planet is not necessarily all that meaningful is it? I mean it could still be way way below the freezing mark. I mean if ithe average temperature of saturn is -130C (http://members.aol.com/_ht_a/bobalien99/table.htm ) and the pole is even 30 degrees C warmer then the pole is only -100C! Still not much going to be happening there I would think.

Perhaps someone else can help me see the real significance of this. (Really I am interested).

Re:It's all relative?

[Scarblac]

Of course it is still bloody cold there - it's described as a jet steam in the Saturn atmosphere, i.e. more atmospheric activity than usual. Not hot springs.

The significance is that we don't have an explanation for it. It's something strange and unexpected. On other planets, the poles are colder than the rest.

Furthermore, if this were the result of seasons (the pole has been in continuous sunlight for 18 earth years, just like our poles have a continuous day during summer), then you'd expect the effect to be gradual, but it's apparently pretty abrupt.

So, unexplained surprising phenomenon. Always interesting.

He'd better be - and several layers of it

[leonbrooks]

"Warm" is defined here relative to roughly -100 to -200degC ambient. "Warm" might freeze you to death in ten minutes instead of eight. "Cold" might freeze you to death in seconds.

$PLANET has a warm pole...

[NanoGator]

If it'd been Uranus, I think I woulda called in sick today.

Re:$PLANET has a warm pole...

[deglr6328]

Since Uranus is tilted on its axis almost ninety degrees it is very likely that the same polar vortex mechanism is at work there (probably even bigger effect than on Saturn) too and we jest haven't seen it yet due to a lack of angular resolution from our ground telescopes. So yes, Uranus probably does have a big hot pole!

broadband imaging

[helioquake]

Considering this is a broad-band IR imaging, isn't it plausible that the bright spot in the south pole is not due to strong thermal continuum, but instead due to strong emission line features?

I wonder if Saturn is too bright for the Spitzer's spectrogrpah.

Re:broadband imaging

[astrobabe]

Given that I work for Spitzer. . .yes. Saturn is on the list of bright sources that will saturate the detectors except possibly short exposures in high resolution mode of IRS. Given that we've accidentally slewed the telescope across it though and left latents, we probably won't be observing it any time soon.

You're not doing it right.

[WaterBreath]

Saturn's "south" pole is warm

Okay, I'm gonna be nitpicky here... Why in the world is the word "south", within quotation marks in the post?

Any planet with a magnetic field will have a south pole (and a north pole, of course), which will probably be on the rotational axis of the planet, and which will not necessarily point the same direction in 3-space as Earth's south pole. The linked story doesn't make a distinction. And a quick Google search shows that none of the major science news outlets have put the "south" in quotes, or made any note that it might not actually be the magnetic south pole. So, why would the poster feel it's necessary to throw in the quotes? A failed attempt at being clever?

Re:You're not doing it right.

[merlin_jim]

Any planet with a magnetic field will have a south pole (and a north pole, of course), which will probably be on the rotational axis of the planet, and which will not necessarily point the same direction in 3-space as Earth's south pole.

You don't even need a magnetic field...

Universal definitions:

East is in the direction of the planet's rotation

West is the opposite of East

If you face East, North is on your left and South is on your right.

For bodies that are tidally locked it gets more complicated... but since Saturn isn't, it has clearly defined North and South poles

In addition, for planets with a magnetic field, there's a magnetic North and magnetic South pole. However, pinpointing the location of a magnetic pole isn't as easy as a rotational pole (as it tends to move over time), so when speaking of poles, it can be assumed you're discussing a rotational pole rather than magnetic.