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Cassini Captures Saturn's Northern Lights

Posted by Soulskill on from the cassini-rules dept.

al0ha writes "In the first video showing the auroras above the northern latitudes of Saturn, Cassini has spotted the tallest known 'northern lights' in the solar system, flickering in shape and brightness high above the ringed planet. The new video reveals changes in Saturn's aurora every few minutes, in high resolution, with three dimensions. The images show a previously unseen vertical profile to the auroras, which ripple in the video like tall curtains. These curtains reach more than 1,200 kilometers (750 miles) above the edge of the planet's northern hemisphere."

33 comments

  1. Captured?? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Interesting

    Is Cassini a terrorist holding Saturn's northern light as a hostage?

  2. my god by v1 · · Score: 1

    it's full of stars...

    --
    I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
  3. Wow... by dandart · · Score: 1

    Sounds interesting. I'm going to have to check it out. Thanks for sharing.

    1. Re:Wow... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Don't bother since it's obviously faked; Cassini died in 1712.

  4. Interesting, but not surprising by tommy_teardrop · · Score: 5, Informative

    ISS videos of the visible aurora have been doing the rounds internally at Cassini for a few months now, and they really are spectacular, but a height of 1200km is hardly a surprise new value, given that it falls in the exact range expected when compared with observations of the UV aurora made by the Hubble Space Telescope:

    Altitude of Saturn's aurora and its implications for the characteristic energy of precipitated electrons

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    -- IANAL, BIPOOTV
    1. Re:Interesting, but not surprising by Hurricane78 · · Score: 1

      Altitude of Saturn's aurora and its implications for the characteristic energy of precipitated electrons

      That’s the first time I looked at the title of something and went: tl;dr. ^^

      --
      Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
  5. IF YOU LOVE IT SET IT FREE !! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Catch and release is my moto !!

    1. Re:IF YOU LOVE IT SET IT FREE !! by Gruff1002 · · Score: 1

      Lets terraform it, or one of its moons.

  6. Re:Christmas gifts,shoes,handbags,Tshirts,ect... by Ethanol-fueled · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Let's DDoS that fucker. Grab the Low Orbit Ion Cannon from bittorent and set it to kill. Who's with me?

  7. Sheeeeeet by zoomshorts · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    OLD DIGG submission, what has this site become?
    Diggers??? seems like it.

  8. Colors? by Tablizer · · Score: 1

    In the movie, Saturn and stars are shown in black-and-white, but the aurora is shown in just orange. This is odd. My speculation is that one filter (frequency) was used for Saturn and the stars and a second filter (displayed as orange) was used for the aurora. There appears to be no overlap between the light collected among the filters. This is also odd. Usually at least some sources show up across the spectrum, and would thus appear in both filters (colors). If the alignment was off, there would be no visual cues of misalignment when there's no sharing.

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    Table-ized A.I.
    1. Re:Colors? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      Mt theory is that you didn't RTFA. It states in quite clearly that the movie has been processed to remove noise (cosmic rays, lens flares etc.) and the aurora has been colored to differentiate it from the background. It also states that the true color of the aurora is not known.

    2. Re:Colors? by Tablizer · · Score: 1

      TFA: "The images were captured in black and white, but the aurora in this movie is shown in a false orange color to distinguish it from background noise in the images...These images were taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft's narrow-angle camera..."

      That doesn't necessarily mean they manually painted it orange. I don't see anything that rules out 2 filters. Both filters could still be in the "visible light" range. Saying "captured in black-and-white" tends to support your viewpoint, but doesn't mean much technically, as almost all filter-based imaging systems use a linear gray scale for each channel. If the article said, "single filter", "single channel", or "single wavelength", then it would be an open-and-shut case. Annotations on Mars rover images often list the frequencies of the filters used. I'll agree your interpretation is the most probable one though.
         

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      Table-ized A.I.
    3. Re:Colors? by Tablizer · · Score: 1

      (Continued) Another thing that bugs me is why they would tint it if it's not based on a 2nd filter. It shows up plenty fine by itself in the movie. I can see tinting it for the stills, but in the movie it stands out enough. Maybe they thought some would get confused by the moving star field. It may be "safer" to use fading arrows to point out the aurora rather than tint. Tinting risks the accusation that they are "playing with colors", which has popped up on other missions. Arrows avoid that accusation all-together. Okay, enough about colors already.

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      Table-ized A.I.
  9. Brought a tear to my eye by c6gunner · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Amazing. Maybe I only find it so emotional because I've recently watched the posthumous autotune of Carl Sagan's Cosmos. Check it here if you haven't seen it. And here's the relevant quote:

    "How lucky we are to live in this time. The first moment in human history. When we are, in fact visiting other worlds."

    1. Re:Brought a tear to my eye by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      "How lucky we are to live in this time. The first moment in human history. When we are, in fact visiting other worlds."

      Well, at least our cameras are.

      "We" are still stuck on Earth (no, ISS doesn't count).

    2. Re:Brought a tear to my eye by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Just think what we humans could achieve if we weren't so caught up on trying to kill each other for the most stupid reasons.

    3. Re:Brought a tear to my eye by Tablizer · · Score: 1

      Carl Sagan's Cosmos..."How lucky we are to live in this time. The first moment in human history. When we are, in fact visiting other worlds."

      He conveniently didn't mention the "Yankee Go Home" signs.

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      Table-ized A.I.
    4. Re:Brought a tear to my eye by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ya, the moon isn't a foreign body... Err...

    5. Re:Brought a tear to my eye by Kjella · · Score: 1

      You speak as if we have been to the moon in my lifetime...

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
  10. Re:Christmas gifts,shoes,handbags,Tshirts,ect... by NotQuiteReal · · Score: 1

    How do you know that wasn't the poster's point? Best to igore -1 Offtopic posts, IMHO.

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    This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
  11. Re:Christmas gifts,shoes,handbags,Tshirts,ect... by Tablizer · · Score: 1

    Spamming on Slashdot is like robbing the donut shop next to the police station.

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    Table-ized A.I.
  12. Spacerip on Hulu by Toothpick · · Score: 1

    http://www.hulu.com/watch/111164/spacerip-saturns-aurora

    Sweet!

  13. Sativa by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Tallest known "northern lights" = Tallest pot plant

  14. Video on Youtube by jlp2097 · · Score: 1

    I'm not going to install quicktime just to watch the video. So here's the youtube link: linky

  15. Cool, but there's cooler from Cassini by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    Cassini just did another flyby of Enceladus a week ago and got some amazing pictures of the ice plumes/geysers found there.

  16. Gas giant? by azav · · Score: 1

    This shows that Saturn has a magnetic field and magnetic poles. I think this directly implies that the gas giant has a solid or molten iron core.

    Time to shoot some radar off that beast and find out where the surface is.

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    - Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...