Starship Asterisk*

A Raging Storm System on Saturn

Explanation: It is one of the largest and longest lived storms ever recorded in our Solar System. First seen late last year, the above cloud formation in the northern hemisphere of Saturn started larger than the Earth and soon spread completely around the planet. The storm has been tracked not only from Earth but from up close by the robotic Cassini spacecraft currently orbiting Saturn. Pictured above in false colored infrared in February, orange colors indicate clouds deep in the atmosphere, while light colors highlight clouds higher up. The rings of Saturn are seen nearly edge-on as the thin blue horizontal line. The warped dark bands are the shadows of the rings cast onto the cloud tops by the Sun to the upper left. A source of radio noise from lightning, the intense storm may relate to seasonal changes as spring slowly emerges in the north of Saturn.

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I like this one a lot. And yesterday's.

What is the little black dot below the ring's shadows? a Saturn-Spot by any chance? are we tracking them?

agulesin wrote:What is the little black dot below the ring's shadows? a Saturn-Spot by any chance? are we tracking them?

That is most likely the shadow of one of Saturn's many moons.

Ann

agulesin wrote:What is the little black dot below the ring's shadows? a Saturn-Spot by any chance? are we tracking them?

"The shadow of the moon Enceladus is visible on the planet in the lower left of the image."
Source: http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA12829
That is the page available at the "Pictured above" link in the APOD text.

Kind of eerie how the rings are so flat and their shadow curves with Saturn's surface.

Source of disturbance has been found....someone fuuted under the clouds....

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Boomer12k wrote:Source of disturbance has been found....someone fuuted under the clouds....

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....fuuted ....do you mean that someone disturbed Saturn's gas with their own

Geesh!, how stunning is Saturn! . . reminds me of that line from Fly Me To The Moon, "let me see what spring is like on Jupiter and Mars" . . and now Saturn too, thanks APOD!!

Want to get our descendants interested in science and mathematics ? Set a goal for our nation to populate every planet in our solar system with an orbiting observatory !! Pass me an ice cold one for posting.

Wolf Kotenberg wrote:Want to get our descendants interested in science and mathematics ? Set a goal for our nation to populate every planet in our solar system with an orbiting observatory !! Pass me an ice cold one for posting.

Here ya go, Wolf. 1-cold sixpack.

The moon's shadow (the little black dot) appears to have rays radiating from it on the Saturn surface. I guess it is strictly coincidental.