woah
NASA Probe Gets Close-Up Views of Large Hurricane on Saturn
Second photo: The spinning vortex of Saturn’s north polar storm resembles a deep red rose of giant proportions surrounded by green foliage in this false-color image from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. Measurements have sized the eye at a staggering 1,250 miles (2,000 kilometers) across with cloud speeds as fast as 330 miles per hour (150 meters per second). Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSIPASADENA, Calif. - NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has provided scientists the first close-up, visible-light views of a behemoth hurricane swirling around Saturn’s north pole.First photo: This spectacular, vertigo inducing, false-color image from NASA’s Cassini mission highlights the storms at Saturn’s north pole. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI
In high-resolution pictures and video, scientists see the hurricane’s eye is about 1,250 miles (2,000 kilometers) wide, 20 times larger than the average hurricane eye on Earth. Thin, bright clouds at the outer edge of the hurricane are traveling 330 mph(150 meters per second). The hurricane swirls inside a large, mysterious, six-sided weather pattern known as the hexagon.
“We did a double take when we saw this vortex because it looks so much like a hurricane on Earth,” said Andrew Ingersoll, a Cassini imaging team member at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. “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.”
Scientists will be studying the hurricane to gain insight into hurricanes on Earth, which feed off warm ocean water. Although there is no body of water close to these clouds high in Saturn’s atmosphere, learning how these Saturnian storms use water vapor could tell scientists more about how terrestrial hurricanes are generated and sustained.Read more here: http://www.nasa.gov/centers/jpl/news/cassini20130429.html
Whattttt? how did I not know about this?
Quick note: the lines don’t have to point upwards and straight next to each other, you can point them in any direction you want.
thank you, improbablenormality, for adding that, becuase I WAS SO FUCKING CONFUSED ABOUT THAT SHIT!
DOES IT GO IN A SPECIFIC DIRECTION?
DOES IT DEPEND ON THE LETTERS AROUND IT?
DOES IT NOT FUCKING MATTER?
that was hard as fucking hell.
