Super Storm on Saturn

Gas giants continue to be greatplaces to observe at a safe distance.

This is the first time since 1990that we have had such a huge storm erupting on Saturn and this gives us anopportunity to collect a lot of new data.

Enjoy the images.

Super Storm on Saturn

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2011/19may_saturnstorm/

May 19, 2011:  NASA's Cassini spacecraft and a European SouthernObservatory ground-based telescope are tracking the growth of a giantearly-spring storm in Saturn's northern hemisphere so powerful that itstretches around the entire planet. The rare storm has been wreaking havoc formonths and shooting plumes of gas high into the planet's atmosphere.

This false-color infrared image shows clouds of large ammonia iceparticles dredged up by the powerful storm. Credit: Cassini.

"Nothing on Earth comes close to this powerful storm," saysLeigh Fletcher, a Cassini team scientist at the University of Oxford in theUnited Kingdom, and lead author of a study that appeared in this week's editionof Science Magazine. "A storm like this is rare. This is only the sixthone to be recorded since 1876, and the last was way back in 1990."

Cassini's radio and plasma wave science instrument first detected thelarge disturbance in December 2010, and amateur astronomers have been watchingit ever since through backyard telescopes.  As it rapidly expanded, thestorm's core developed into a giant, powerful thunderstorm, producing a3,000-mile-wide (5,000-kilometer-wide) dark vortex possibly similar toJupiter's Great Red Spot.

This is the first major storm on Saturn observed by an orbitingspacecraft and studied at thermal infrared wavelengths.  Infraredobservations are key because heat tells researchers a great deal aboutconditions inside the storm, including temperatures, winds, and atmosphericcomposition. Temperature data were provided by the Very Large Telescope (VLT) onCerro Paranal in Chile and Cassini's composite infrared spectrometer (CIRS),operated by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

"Our new observations show that the storm had a major effect onthe atmosphere, transporting energy and material over great distances --creating meandering jet streams and forming giant vortices -- and disruptingSaturn's seasonal [weather patterns]," said Glenn Orton, a paperco-author, based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

The violence of the storm -- the strongest disturbances ever detectedin Saturn's stratosphere -- took researchers by surprise. What started as anordinary disturbance deep in Saturn's atmosphere punched through the planet'sserene cloud cover to roil the high layer known as the stratosphere.

Thermal infrared images of Saturn from the Very Large Telescope Imagerand Spectrometer for the mid-Infrared (VISIR) instrument on the EuropeanSouthern Observatory's Very Large Telescope, on Cerro Paranal, Chile,appear at center and on the right. An amateur visible-light image from TrevorBarry, of Broken Hill, Australia, appears on the left. Theimages were obtained on Jan. 19, 2011.

"On Earth, the lower stratosphere is where commercial airplanesgenerally fly to avoid storms which can cause turbulence," says BrigetteHesman, a scientist at the Universityof Maryland in College Park who works on the CIRS team atGoddard and is the second author on the paper. "If you were flying in anairplane on Saturn, this storm would reach so high up, it would probably beimpossible to avoid it."

 A separate analysis using Cassini's visual and infrared mappingspectrometer, led by Kevin Baines of JPL, confirmed the storm is very violent,dredging up deep material in volumes several times larger than previous storms.Other Cassini scientists are studying the evolving storm and, they say, a moreextensive picture will emerge soon.

Stay tuned to Science@NASA for updates.