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Cassini Observes Hurricane-Like Storm On Saturn
Aglassis writes "The Cassini spacecraft recently observed a hurricane-like storm on the south pole of Saturn. What makes this storm particularly interesting is that this is the first time that a clearly defined eyewall has been seen outside of the Earth in the Solar System. Neither the Great White Spot of Saturn nor the Great Red Spot of Jupiter have had an observable eyewall. NASA, JPL, and the Space Science Institute have released a short movie of the motion around the eyewall (mirrored at YouTube)."
Although I don't think this one led to 1200 dead or left to die.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
It's an alien transportation portal!
I for one welcome our gas giant portal-creating overlords and any new cliches they can teach us!
For you folks that actually get up when it is still dark, Saturn is really nice this season:
Saturn (magnitude +0.5, in Leo), rises around 11:30 or midnight and is in fine view high in the southeast by early dawn. Regulus, about half as bright, sparkles 5 below Saturn after they rise. By dawn Regulus is to Saturn's lower left.
http://skytonight.com/observing/ataglance
It could be worse, it could be Monday.
For those interested, unmannedspaceflight has active discussions on well.. unmanned space flight, and in particular, this mission. Cassini is another successful unmanned mission. Space is really starting to get exciting again.
The moon has a mass of 7.36 × 10^22 kilograms. Assuming you are feisty, you might have a 10 kg hammer. The moon is 730,000,000,000,000,000,000 times more massive than the hammer. It won't even notice it.
If this is more you being bizzaro than it is a bizzaro troll, good luck with that.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
What next, blizzards on Venus??
Gas clouds erupting from Uranus?
cuz, you know, has so much more geek cred than youtube. And imeem's video uploader didn't try to squish the 1:1 aspect ratio into 4:3 so it looks a lot better.
At least he's not attacking New Orleans again with his hurricane conjuring powers. What did he have against cajun cooking anyway?
Judges and senates have been bought for gold; Esteem and love were never to be sold.
...that's Great Caesar's Goatse!!! Be VERY afraid.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
So now home insurance premiums on Saturn are going to go through the roof!
What if the Hokey Pokey really is what it's all about?
Newtonian Zen: Does it exist if it cannot be observed?
TFA: If you go to youtube, give the cassini (and other space exploration) videos a go and rate them, it will encourage them (and others) to put up more.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
After staring at it for a few seconds I expected James Bond to appear and shoot at me.
You can get the press-release from the source at http://ciclops.org/view_event.php?id=57, if you so desire.
You forgot the 3 micron clump of moon-dust located directly below (with respect to the moon's center of gravity), ergo the feather hits first. Spatial bodies are not, in general, perfect spheres.
Aikon-
[...] below the *feather* [...]
/sigh =/
Maybe not a gas cloud, but there seems to be a "Dark Spot on Uranus".
Cosmic dingleberry.
(Uranus jokes will never get old. Insert renaming to Urectum joke here).
Remember, You are unique...just like everyone else.
Do you honestly think we can control poverty, disease, wars, and "Head On" commercials? I can see wrestling with the first three, but those commercials are unstoppable.
You are a true optimist.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is usually crucified.
Cajun? Look about 100 miles west if you want Cajun cooking. That's more of Creole style food in the New Orleans area!
- Miffed Cajun
Even Bush-bashing has to make at least a little sense, people!
I mean, I know parent is trying to make a Katrina connection, but this is strained at best.
This would have been a better article if it had been about Uranus.
Regular Meta Moderators are not more likely to get mod points.
Yeah, don't let Emeril Lagasse hear you talk about New Orleans cooking that way!
Head on, apply directly to the forehead!
Head on, apply directly to the forehead!
Head on, apply directly to the forehead!
This image and its' writeup on the Cassini Website says this hurricane cut 20-45 miles through Saturn's cloud cover. The Cassini Team was able to calculate this figure from the way the Sun's shadow deepened on the 3 hour (14 frames) image.
My questions are:
1) how thick was the remaining cloud layer, and
2) would it be possible to get a view of Saturn's surface?
Exactl... Hey!
Wooosh!
Now I can't tell if it flew by my head or yours.
"I think I am a fallen star. I should wish on myself."
Uh, to the best of my knowledge, it is public domain. I don't think we have ever gone after anyone for posting our image products before, anyway. The point of a press-release is pretty much to get the images or movies out there.
Not to go ruining perfectly wonderful Bush/Katrina/goatse discussions by talking about science, but I thought I'd point out why this is actually really interesting to a lot of people outside of NASA. There are a large subset of people studying the atmospheres of Jupiter and Saturn because they provide really nice examples of atmospheric processes on Earth under more "ideal" circumstances. The typical storm on Jupiter or Saturn behaves much more similarly to a mid-latitude storm on Earth from a fluid mechanics point of view, meaning their energy source is related to temperature gradients or horizontal wind-shear. This is the first example of a system that behaves much more like a tropical storm does on Earth, which feed on latent energy. On Earth these systems depend critically on moisture and condensation (hence their connection with the ocean), so I'd be very very interested to find out what is the energy source for this storm on Saturn. It implies that either there is an upwelling heat source or some sort of condensable species in the atmosphere of Saturn, given the mechanics of this type of storm depend on latent heat release to form.
I didn't know there were any black people on Saturn to hate. And Rovian Plots need to be hatched on Jupiter - at least it rhymes.
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
Oh God, not planetary porn. Ugh, I can see it now. Lots of plants with gigantic penises and breasts tacked onto them in some kind of freakish bukkake orgy. Now that I think about it, I'm surprised I haven't seen it on 4chan already.