Super Storm on Saturn   
       
   May 19, 2011:  NASA's Cassini spacecraft and a European Southern Observatory   
   ground-based telescope are tracking the growth of a giant early-spring storm   
   in Saturn's northern hemisphere so powerful that it stretches around the   
   entire planet. The rare storm has been wreaking havoc for months and shooting   
   plumes of gas high into the planet's atmosphere.   
   [...]   
   This false-color infrared image shows clouds of large ammonia ice particles   
   dredged up by the powerful storm. Credit: Cassini. [more]   
       
   "Nothing on Earth comes close to this powerful storm," says Leigh Fletcher, a   
   Cassini team scientist at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, and   
   lead author of a study that appeared in this week's edition of Science   
   Magazine. "A storm like this is rare. This is only the sixth one to be   
   recorded since 1876, and the last was way back in 1990."   
       
   Cassini's radio and plasma wave science instrument first detected the large   
   disturbance in December 2010, and amateur astronomers have been watching it   
   ever since through backyard telescopes.  As it rapidly expanded, the storm's   
   core developed into a giant, powerful thunderstorm, producing a    
   ,000-mile-wide (5,000-kilometer-wide) dark vortex possibly similar to   
   Jupiter's Great Red Spot.   
       
   This is the first major storm on Saturn observed by an orbiting spacecraft and   
   studied at thermal infrared wavelengths.  Infrared observations are key   
   because heat tells researchers a great deal about conditions inside the storm,   
   including temperatures, winds, and atmospheric composition. Temperature data   
   were provided by the Very Large Telescope (VLT) on Cerro Paranal in Chile and   
   Cassini's composite infrared spectrometer (CIRS), operated by NASA's Goddard   
   Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.   
       
   "Our new observations show that the storm had a major effect on the   
   atmosphere, transporting energy and material over great distances -- creating   
   meandering jet streams and forming giant vortices -- and disrupting Saturn's   
   seasonal [weather patterns]," said Glenn Orton, a paper co-author, based at   
   NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.   
       
   The violence of the storm -- the strongest disturbances ever detected in   
   Saturn's stratosphere -- took researchers by surprise. What started as an   
   ordinary disturbance deep in Saturn's atmosphere punched through the planet's   
   serene cloud cover to roil the high layer known as the stratosphere.   
   [...]   
   Thermal infrared images of Saturn from the Very Large Telescope Imager and   
   Spectrometer for the mid-Infrared (VISIR) instrument on the European Southern   
   Observatory's Very Large Telescope, on Cerro Paranal, Chile, appear at center   
   and on the right. An amateur visible-light image from Trevor Barry, of Broken   
   Hill, Australia, appears on the left. The images were obtained on Jan. 19,   
   2011. [more]   
       
   "On Earth, the lower stratosphere is where commercial airplanes generally fly   
   to avoid storms which can cause turbulence," says Brigette Hesman, a scientist   
   at the University of Maryland in College Park who works on the CIRS team at   
   Goddard and is the second author on the paper. "If you were flying in an   
   airplane on Saturn, this storm would reach so high up, it would probably be   
   impossible to avoid it."   
       
   A separate analysis using Cassini's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer,   
   led by Kevin Baines of JPL, confirmed the storm is very violent, dredging up   
   deep material in volumes several times larger than previous storms. Other   
   Cassini scientists are studying the evolving storm and, they say, a more   
   extensive picture will emerge soon.   
       
   Stay tuned to Science@NASA for updates.   
       
       
   Editor: Dr. Tony Phillips | Credit: Science@NASA   
       
   More Information   
   The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European   
   Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The mission is managed by JPL for   
   NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The European Southern   
   Observatory in Garching, Germany operates the VLT in Chile. JPL is a division   
   of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.   
       
       
   Regards,   
       
   Roger   
      
   --- D'Bridge 3.61   
    * Origin: NCS BBS (1:3828/7)