NASA’s Cassini spacecraft orbiting Saturn has imaged a huge storm – a raging event on the massive planet.
“Just down on the ground today … our cameras on Cassini have captured sight of a gigantic storm recently erupted in the northern hemisphere of Saturn,” reported Carolyn Porco, Cassini Imaging Team Leader and Director of the Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for Operations (CICLOPS) at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado.
“This storm had been sighted by the amateurs in recent weeks,” Porco said, “but Cassini was finally in a position to take a splendid series of pictures of it. And what a storm it is!”
It only goes to show, Porco added: “It pays to have a sophisticated observatory in orbit around Saturn.”
The Cassini Solstice Mission is a joint United States and European endeavor.
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington, D.C.
The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team consists of scientists from the US, England, France, and Germany.
To get an eyeful and more information, go to:
http://www.ciclops.org/view_event/152/Saturn_Storm_Rev_142_Raw_Preview?js=1