Cassini Captures Saturn's Northern Lights

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."

Comments

Interesting, but not surprising

[tommy_teardrop]

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

Brought a tear to my eye

[c6gunner]

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."

Re:Colors?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.