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Blighty's winter storms are PUNY compared to Saturn's 200mph, 15,000 mile wide HEXACANE
NASA's Cassini spacecraft has delivered some insightful images of a monster storm raging at Saturn's north pole - a six sided-beast 'wider than two Earths' and within which winds reach an umbrella-shredding 350km/h. Cassini false-colour view of the six-sided storm. Pic: NASA In a series of false-colour snaps (animated …
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Friday 6th December 2013 11:04 GMT Chris Miller
Umbrella-shredding
Lovin' it!
But (donning my standard pedant's hat) your umbrella gets shredded here on Earth because you're standing on solid ground and the wind's blowing relative to you. On Saturn you'd be in the atmosphere. so the force from Saturnian wind would depend on wind shear and (crucially) atmospheric density. I've no idea how dense the atmosphere is at the altitudes at which this storm is raging - obviously deep down there are very high densities because of the enormous depths of the atmosphere and Saturn's higher gravity. I may do some Googling on the topic if I get some time later on.
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Friday 6th December 2013 14:42 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: North Pole
The storm is down to atmospheric circulation just as the Antarctic has a large circumpolar vortex, so it's not magnetic.
You're quite right, Saturn has very little temperature difference between the equator and poles because most of its atmospheric heat is coming from an internal (poorly understood going on 'no bloody idea') heat source.
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Friday 6th December 2013 18:48 GMT Nigel 11
Re: North Pole
internal (poorly understood going on 'no bloody idea') heat source.
Something undergoing a phase change such as gas or liquid to solid, both down in the planet's depths. Outside chance that it's a low level of fusion (D-D), or there's a lot of radioactive Potassium in a rocky core that theory says Saturn shouldn't have.
Lots of hydrocarbons, enormous pressure: what are the odds on Saturn's atmosphere concealing the Solar System's second-biggest and still-growing diamond as its core?
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Friday 6th December 2013 18:44 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Why a hexagon?
A very good question.
From the article: NASA explains that the storm "folds into a six-sided shape because the hexagon [in the image] is a stationary wave that guides the path of the gas in the jet".
Which essentially says that it's six-sided because it's a Hexagon! I've added the omission/qualifier because without it the statement appears to be redefining the meaning of "hexagon" to mean a "stationary wave".
So why is it hexagonal? Well, I suspect that it's just an imaging artifact due to the photo being a composite of six images; the entire polar hemisphere can't be photographed in a single shot because half of it will be in shadow and two thirds of what isn't in shadow will still be significantly darker than the middle third that most closely faces the Sun; to get an evenly illuminated image, as shown, you need to take multiple photos and stitch them together.
So there are not six nodes but just one, which is probably due to solar heating at the boundary of the storm facing the Sun with the result that it shifts a few degrees of latitude further away from the poles but which stays in the same place i.e. facing the Sun, as the planet revolves.
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
