The spacecraft Cassini captured an impressively detailed view of “the dark eye” of Saturn, a huge funnel-shaped storm more than a century of what is happening at the South pole of the planet. The storm is so huge that he easily would have devoured the whole Earth. The resulting picture consists of two different photos taken by the spacecraft in July 2008 from a distance of about 392 000 kilometers from the surface of the gas giant.
New picture about 10 times further than before image of the storm. The scale is approximately 2 kilometers by 1 pixel. Earlier attempts to capture the “polar eyes of Saturn” showed that the storm center in fact consists of a transparent air-filled and cloud-like structures.
The new image allows you to take a fresh look at the storm with a diameter of 8000 kilometers. In the middle of a storm here and there are convective clouds formed from rising from the surface warmer, and then the cooling gases. On the left upper part of the image you can see how these clouds formed secondary vortex.
Hurricanes on Saturn are formed not so, as they are formed on Earth. Earthly storm, gaining its strength due to moisture, which they get from the ocean water, but no oceans on the same Saturn no. One of the most logical theories suggests that its power main polar storm planet draw from the many resulting small and short-term hurricanes.
Over time, smaller storms are moving to the polar regions, bringing in other air masses. Their collision is the main source of the emergence of vortices. Astronomers believe that observation of the polar vortex will allow more details to understand how it can form storms on other exoplanets and what intensity of stereopathy those planets possess.
Space Agency NASA is currently considering the possibility of running multiple space probes “windblow” to study the atmosphere of Jupiter and Saturn.
Look mindbody will be something like this
As for the spacecraft “Cassini”, it commenced the latter part of his mission. The unit will be released into a polar orbit of the planet, passing between the surface and the rings of Saturn. In other words, in a short time we expect even more amazing images of this mysterious world and its storms.
#photo | spacecraft “Cassini” looked into the heart of the Arctic hurricane of Saturn
Nikolai Khizhnyak