Posted on 02/14/2014 12:47:21 AM PST by Windflier
You're looking at a newly released 8-frame movie of Saturn's enigmatic "hexagon." It is the highest-resolution footage ever acquired of the massive six-sided maelstrom atop the ringed planet's north pole, and boy howdy is it gorgeous.
For the uninitiated, Saturn's uncannily symmetric cloud system measures roughly 20,000-miles across, and is utterly unique in our solar system. Its dimensions and dynamics are just bizarre.
At the hexagon's center whirls a tightly wound hurricane roughly fifty-times larger than the average hurricane-eye on Earth.
About it spins an assortment of smaller vortices, caught up in the hexagon's jet stream, that rotate clockwise, even as the central hurricane, and the outer hexagon, rotate in the opposite direction. The largest of the smaller vortices, appearing white in the lower right corner of the hexagon, spans about 2,200 miles – roughly twice the size of Earth's largest hurricanes.
(Excerpt) Read more at io9.com ...
Got it!
Do you know that it has no ‘surface’? it is one of the ‘gas giants’ - it is all gas
Got it!
Do you know that it has no ‘surface’? it is one of the ‘gas giants’ - it is all gas
Yes I do. That’s why I always put the word “surface” in quotes. I guess I could have called it “the transition area from the planet proper - to the lower atmosphere” but I’m too lazy to type that much.
Psalms 68:19 KJV
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.