Saturn and Jupiter





I was absolutely stunned by the beauty of this backlit image of Saturn from this Nasa Photjournal. This image from the Cassini spacecraft is actually a subset of a composite of 165 images taken from the Cassini wide-angle camera. The above image is an exaggerated or stretched color image with the original just below.






Also of note, planetary scientists have also observed through the Hubble telescope that the small white spot on Jupiter that was observed last year has changed color from white to red, possibly due to atmospheric mixing or turbulence. There may also be novel chemistry in action here as the winds in the small spot, previously white, have now matched wind speeds seen in the Great Red Spot nearby.




I suspect though that we are actually dealing with atmospheric turbulence as can be seen in this animation below of Jupiter's Great Red spot.


Posted: Thu - October 12, 2006 at 11:18 AM          

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