The last major storm on Saturn’s surface occurred in late 2010, giving us spectacular images of a planet divided by a column of clouds the size of Europa. The European Space Agency (ESA) is now publishing a series of photographs taken by the Cassini probe on that occasion that show for the first time the progress of a saturnal storm . These unusual meteorological phenomena occur once every 30 Earth years, that is, once during each orbit of Saturn around the Sun.
This particular image shows what the storm looked like on March 6, 2011, showing the head of the storm (left) and a spinning vortex in formation (center). The colors of the image have been altered to reflect the different heights of the storm clouds , where the white color indicates the highest areas. To human eyes, however, the storm would appear as a bright area on a yellow background. The probe also monitored the temperature of the storm, detecting a rapid increase as energy began to be released into the atmosphere.
The last storm was one of the largest and longest ever recorded in our Solar System , lasting for 200 days and spanning 15,000 kilometers across. The event also surprised scientists as it occurred during the spring of the northern hemisphere and not during the summer, a season when storms are usually more frequent. As with Earth, the axis of Saturn is slightly tilted, so they also have a seasonal cycle, only much longer.
The Cassini-Huygens project in which NASA, ESA and ASI collaborate, studies the meteorology of Saturn with the aim of clarifying the physical mechanisms that underlie the formation of these violent storms, which will help to understand the formation of storms. equatorial and tropical terrestrial.
