Swirling
vortices wend their way through an ocean of hydrogen and helium in Saturn’s far
northern atmosphere, as seen by Cassini.
Saturn
has turned out to be more like stormy Jupiter than a sea of tranquility, as shown by images and data from NASA’s Cassini mission. The spacecraft previously took
images of a hurricane-like
storm at the south pole as well as a strange hexagon
shape circling the north pole. Cassini has also witnessed an ongoing
monster storm that shot
lightning bolts thousands of miles long.
This
image was taken on May 23, approximately 776,000 miles (1.2 million kilometers)
from Saturn. The Cassini mission recently concluded its primary, four-year
mission on June 30 and began an extended
two-year tour of Saturn and its moons.
— NASA and SPACE.com Staff
Credit: NASA/JPL/Space
Science Institute
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