Wow! Monster Hurricane on Saturn

[Hum]

Spectacular new images from a NASA spacecraft orbiting Saturn have captured the most detailed views ever of an enormous hurricane churning around the ringed planet's north pole.

The stunning new images and video of the Saturn hurricane, which were taken by NASA's Cassini probe, show that the storm's eye is 1,250 miles (2,000 kilometers) wide ? about 20 times bigger than typical hurricane eyes on Earth. And the Saturn maelstrom is more powerful than its Earth counterparts, with winds at its outer edge whipping around at 330 mph (530 km/h).

"We did a double take when we saw this vortex because it looks so much like a hurricane on Earth," Cassini imaging team member Andrew Ingersoll, of Caltech in Pasadena, said in a statement. "But there it is at Saturn, on a much larger scale, and it is somehow getting by on the small amounts of water vapor in Saturn's hydrogen atmosphere."

Saturn's hurricane swirls inside a mysterious, six-sided vortex. Unlike hurricanes on Earth, which tend to drift northward as our planet rotates, the Saturn storm and its hexagonal vortex have been camped out at the north pole for a while.

"The polar hurricane has nowhere else to go, and that's likely why it's stuck at the pole," Kunio Sayanagi, a Cassini imaging team associate at Hampton University in Hampton, Va., said in a statement.

While the Saturn hurricane is larger and more powerful than Earth hurricanes, storms on the two planets are alike in some ways. For example, both have central eyes containing very low clouds or no clouds at all, researchers said. Other shared traits are high clouds forming the eye wall, and a counterclockwise spin in the northern hemisphere.

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[+Warwagon MVC]

It looks like someone turned on the Event Horizon!

[Arceles]

Damn... that's big

[123456789A]

Hope they have good insurance on Saturn.

[Growled Member]

While the Saturn hurricane is larger and more powerful than Earth hurricanes, storms on the two planets are alike in some ways. For example, both have central eyes containing very low clouds or no clouds at all, researchers said.

I wonder if it would be possible to fly into they eye?

[adrynalyne]

I wonder if it would be possible to fly into they eye?

They probably wouldn't appreciate that :p

[Hum]

I wonder if it would be possible to fly into they eye?

Possible -- I wouldn't count on coming out alive. :laugh:

[Growled Member]

They probably wouldn't appreciate that :p

Probably not. :D

[ShareShiz]

That hurricane has hurricanes :|