Astronomers Find 'Hot Spot' on Saturn

AP on Yahoo ^ | 2/4/05 | Jaymes Song - AP

[NormsRevenge]

HONOLULU - Astronomers using a giant telescope atop a volcano have discovered a hot spot at the tip of Saturn's south pole.

The infrared images captured by the Keck I telescope at the W.M. Keck Observatory atop Mauna Kea on the Big Island suggest a warm polar vortex — a large-scale weather pattern likened to a jet stream on Earth that occurs in the upper atmosphere. It's the first such hot vortex ever discovered in the solar system.

The team of scientists say the images are the sharpest thermal views of Saturn ever taken from the ground. Their work will be a published in Friday's editions of the journal Science.

This warm polar cap is believed to contain the highest temperatures on Saturn; the scientists did not give a temperature estimate.

On Earth, the Arctic Polar Vortex is typically located over eastern North America in Canada and plunges cold arctic air to the northern Plains in the United States.

Polar vortices are found on Earth, Jupiter, Mars and Venus, and are colder than their surroundings. The new images from the Keck Observatory show the first evidence of a polar vortex at much warmer temperatures.

"Saturn's is the first hot polar vortex that we've seen because it's been sitting in the sunlight for about 18 years," said Glenn S. Orton, a scientist at NASA (news - web sites)'s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and lead author.

Saturn, which takes many earth years to orbit the sun, just had its summer solstice in 2002.

"If the increased southern temperatures are solely the result of seasonality, then the temperature should increase gradually with increasing latitude, but it doesn't," Orton said. "We see that the temperature increases abruptly by several degrees near 70 degrees south and again at 87 degrees south.

"A really hot thing within a couple degrees of the pole is something I don't understand at all," he said.

Scientists may learn more from the data coming from the infrared spectrometer on the Cassini spacecraft currently orbiting Saturn, information that is expected to complement the Keck discovery, Orton said.

___

On the Net:

Keck Observatory: http://www.keckobservatory.org

Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Saturn page: http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov

[NormsRevenge]

In this image released Thursday, Feb. 3, 2005, by NASA (news - web sites)/JPL, a mosaic of 35 individual infrared exposures made on Feb. 4, 2004, at the W.M. Keck I Observatory, Mauna Kea, Hawaii, shows what scientists say are the sharpest views of Saturn's temperature emissions ever taken from the ground. The prominent hot spot at the bottom of the image is right at Saturn's south pole. The warming of the southern hemisphere was expected, as Saturn was just past southern summer solstice, but the abrupt changes in temperature with latitude were not expected. A small section of the ring image is missing because of incomplete mosaic coverage during the observing sequence. (AP Photo/NASA/JPL)

[RightWhale]

Interesting. Perhaps there is some starlike reaction going on inside.

[George Smiley]

Astronomers Find 'Hot Spot' on Saturn, Global Warming blamed.

[RexBeach]

Are there any waterfront lots in this hot spot?

[Darkwolf377]

Put some ice on it, Saturn

[TomGuy]

Who left the stove on?

[bubman]

GWB's fault!

[patriot_wes]

"Astronomers Find 'Hot Spot' on Saturn"

Great! More global warming nonsense. I wonder how much it's gonna cost us to fix this -

and of course China will be exempt.

[Lazamataz]

Saturn is becoming our back-up sun.

[Grzegorz 246]

Looks interesting, is there any oil ?

[advance_copy]

Astronomers using a giant telescope atop a volcano have discovered a hot spot...

Ummm, hey Fred, make sure you wipe the lava off the lense every now and then.

[henkster]

Ya beat me to it!

Oh, and yes, it's Bush's fault.

[billorites]

[ProudVet77]

Have thought for some time that Saturn would have become a star had it increased it's mass a few times over (maybe absorbing Jupiter). Binary star systems are fairly common out there.

[roaddog727]

I wonder if it may be a magnetic lines of force confluence.....

[billybudd]

Astronomers using a giant telescope atop a volcano have discovered a hot spot at the tip of Saturn's south pole.

Environmental interference, maybe?

[martin_fierro]

Poing

[ClearCase_guy]

I'm also interested in the wedge-shaped chunk that's missing from the rings. Do Astronomers have any explanation for how such a neat slice of ring-material could be suddenly removed???

it's a joke

[RightWhale]

Jupiter is already on the verge of starhood. Jupiter has rings, too, but very faint. Saturn is somewhat smaller, but there is something going on there with those monstrous rings. Maybe the warm spot is due to the planet swallowing a moon not so long ago, but how would the heat migrate to the pole?

[Rocket1968]

"Astronomers Find 'Hot Spot' on Saturn, Global Warming blamed."

Actually this would be considered "Universal Warming." It is a much more lethal form.