Friday, December 13, 2013

Saturn’s Mysterious Hexagon Behaves Like Earth’s Ozone Hole

Saturn’s Mysterious Hexagon Behaves Like Earth’s Ozone Hole:
At Saturn, NASA's Cassini spacecraft snapped pictures showing a high-resolution view of a hexagon-shaped jet stream. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI/Hampton
Saturn’s Mysterious Hexagon Behaves Like Earth’s Ozone Hole
At Saturn, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft snapped pictures showing a high-resolution view of a hexagon-shaped jet stream. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI/Hampton
A raging hurricane is creating a “suck zone” at Saturn’s north pole. The handy Cassini spacecraft recently captured a bunch of images of the six-sided jet stream surrounding the storm, which mission managers then put together into an awesome animation showing the wind currents shifting. (You can see the animation below the jump.)
The feature is pretty in a picture, but NASA has a special interest because there is nothing else like this anywhere in our solar system, the agency stated. The immense storm stretches 20,000 miles (30,000 kilometers) across with winds whipping in its jet stream at 200 miles per hour (322 kilometers per hour). And despite all the turbulence, the storm is staying put at the north pole for reasons scientists are still trying to understand.
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Read the rest of Saturn’s Mysterious Hexagon Behaves Like Earth’s Ozone Hole (434 words)

© Elizabeth Howell for Universe Today, 2013. |Permalink |No comment |
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