Saturn's bizarre HEXAGONAL storm system is revealed in true colour for the first time

reply to post by Phage


Amazing how they discovered this.. But does it mean that there's allot of water on the north pole of Saturn that causes this effect?

0bserver1
reply to post by Phage

 

Amazing how they discovered this.. But does it mean that there's allot of water on the north pole of Saturn that causes this effect?

No, you are looking at the atmosphere (Saturn is a gas giant). Gasses behave like fluids too. en.wikipedia.org...

My first impression, when I saw the op, was that it had something to do the phenomena that causes the formation of hexagonal basalt columns.


From my understanding, the hex shape is the most efficient, shape for materials to compress inward when rapid cooling occurs. Considering that the hex shape occurs at the North pole, I think its reasonable to think this has something to do with rapid cooling at the pole.

reply to post by wildespace


I know but water in gas form is called steam.. and clouds here on earth. I asked this because the question raises that here on earth hurricanes are fed by water. And so you can also see clouds in upper layer of Saturn?

But hurricanes here on earth move across the ocean because there is lots of it . But on Saturn its locked on Saturn pole?

0bserver1
I know but water in gas form is called steam.. and clouds here on earth. I asked this because the question raises that here on earth hurricanes are fed by water. And so you can also see clouds in upper layer.

It certainly looks as if those are clouds in those images. Maybe those Aliens on Titan really are terraforming Saturn! ~$heopleNation

It's also been spotted in North Pole of the third largest moon of Saturn, Iapetus:




Hexagons: natural and human-made

Truly amazing. . .I've wondered about this for years.
I've not read about why scientists think this storm as taken this shape, though. Nature, in all its forms, is just simply amazing.

Here on earth, water (h20) does tend to form hexagonal prisms when forming snowflakes.
For some reason when the temperature hits the right spot; hexagonal latices are formed within the water molecules which eventually become snowflakes.

Saturn is a cold gas giant made up of Hydrogen, Helium and various other common gasses so given the temperatures (cold) and the chemical composition it doesnt seem to far fetched to imagine a scenario where earth recognizable patterns are seen-albeit at the planetary scale.

If we think about Saturn as possibly having a liquid core, with hydrogen and helium going through phase changes in the atmosphere then having an aatmoshperic border with the vacum of space- at a chilly minus 274 degrees c - does this really seem so strange?

wildespace
I'm waiting for the day robotic spacecraft carry a regular colour digital camera, to take regular true-colour images, like we do on Earth.

Except, we don't, not really. Take a "true-colour" picture of someone or something, then hold the picture up to the subject for comparison. Is their skin really that color? Is the wall really that shade of brown?

Color cameras (whether film or digital) only produce an approximation of the colors of the real world. Yeah, it "looks about right" at a casual glance, but if you really try a detailed comparison, it's shortcomings are obvious.

The generated color images from space probes are often more accurate than your hand-held camera because they are made from multiple grey-scale exposures through filters of an exact wavelength. This takes a lot of the guesswork out of the color mixing. An off-the-shelf color camera would not give as accurate a result.

reply to post by Saint Exupery


The public doesn't need it to be precisely accurate. We're satisfied with colour photography on Earth, we will be satisfied with it in space. The is a lot of raw image data available from spacecraft, taken through broadband red / green / blue fiters (so they are not a precise wavelength like you said), but the science teams don't always make RGB composites from them, as they quite rightly concentrate on doing science and research instead. Some people can make those RGB composites themselves, but as the raw images are uncalibrated, it is not always possible to adjust the colour to reflect what we would see with our own eyes (for example, uncalibrated Titan appears white with vivid blue haze, Saturn appears bluish-greyish-yellowish, etc.) The Moon has historically been photographed in B&W, erasing any subtle hues it has. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter uses Red and Blue-Green filters, and the science team have to generate a synthetic green channel to make approximately true-colour images.

I realise this this only on the public wish-list, and scientists are more concerned with what they can get out of their images rather than whether it represents true colour... but hopefully at some point future space mission will have enough funding and technological elbow-room to include ordinary colour photography.

The Japanese moon orbiter Kaguya had a colour widescreen HDTV camera, purely for PR purposes. Wouldn't it be amazing to see such a fly-by (ok, a timelapse) of Saturn and its moons?

UpEndedWorld

Bilder

Some more stunning images at the link

www.dailymail.co.uk...

Some great pics, enjoy ATS

what's that supposed to be at the top corner? a solar panel, is it?
how can the vast distance and the very near foreground be both
in focus at the same time?

eta;

This older, colour composite image - showing false shades - has been created from raw images taken by Cassini from a distance of 379,268 miles away

so it is a composite, showing false shades, but why include the solar panel?
I think it is all false and these are false images.

hexagonal storms indeed!

I know, I know. the government (and nasa) always are truthful and honest.

edit on 18/10/2013 by UpEndedWorld because: (no reason given)

Then again, sometimes? A beautiful picture of a far away world is just a beautiful picture of a far away world. Just my thoughts...

Thanks for the share, OP! It sounds like someone shared these at some earlier point, but I sure missed it. I'm glad they're here to see. Just..stunning.

Now when do they get serious about running probes down into these planets to see if it's really what it appears to be? I swear that looks like a partial break more than a storm with a ocean below. I know it can't be...by what they tell us of that planet. I wonder tho...How sure can 'they' be?

reply to post by wildespace


I gotta say, wildespace - you post the coolest pics & vids!

Definitely have added you to my "must-read" posters list...