The Rose of Saturn: A massive hurricane that’s twice the width of Earth

The images you see above, captured by NASA’s Cassini orbiter, is a hurricane on Saturn that’s twice the size of Earth. The eye of the storm, shown in red, is about 1,250 miles (2,000km) wide — about 20 times larger than the eye of hurricanes here on Earth — and the outer edge of the hurricane is traveling at around 330 mph (150 meters per second).

Scientists have speculated about the existence of the hurricane ever since Cassini spotted a massive vortex with its infrared camera at Saturn’s north pole in 2004. Unfortunately it was winter at the time, and so Cassini’s visible light imager couldn’t see anything. Today, however, it’s Saturnian spring and sunlight has flooded the north pole, and to take advantage of the illumination Cassini has shifted into an orbit that gives it a much better view. Now, after nine years of theorizing, it’s abundantly clear that there’s a massive hurricane on Saturn.

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Came across this article and thought i would bring it to ATS attention.

The storm is twice the size of our Earth and traveling at 330mph! I'm amazed at such destruction and beauty combined together, spectacularly beautiful and humbling at the same time!

reply to post by andy06shake


To me the giant hexagon surrounding it is more interesting. What forces are responsible for that??

Mike.Ockizard look at the small blue coloured storm front (I presume) below and to the left.

Maybe this has something to do with the nature of the hexagonal shape?

reply to post by Gwampo


Buddy the figures are from the article, not mine.

I got shivers just by looking at it. I sure would hate to be on that planet, imagine the wind! But the lightning would be pretty cool.

Amazing what nature can do.