Okay, 2010 definitely shook up the solar system!
Earth undergoes coldest temperatures in 25 years (all 50 states had snow at the same time).
Mars' southern ice cap melts.
Jupiter mysteriously loses an atmospheric band.
And the latest.... Storm on Saturn has continued to grow to monster-proportions. Read more.
Brewing Storm on Saturn
Just before the holidays, Universe Today reported about the Growing Storm On Saturn and showed us the Cassini images.
Now more than a month has passed and the white scar of the raging atmosphere has escalated to an incredible size…
Nearly 10 Earths wide! Amateur astronomers are recording every minute!
Despite sub-zero temperatures and significant snow cover, at least one dedicated observer has been getting up early to
observe what we rarely see – a change in Saturn’s pale golden face. “I was out from 4:30am to 6:00am early Saturday morning.
I brushed all the snow off my Dome, and spent an hour or so shooting Saturn with its Big White Storm brewing in the cloud tops.”
say John Chumack of Dayton, Ohio. “The seeing conditions were not the best, but I went for it anyway, after the high cirrus clouds
moved out of the way, I had to try! -3F Temps in my backyard in Dayton, OH nearly killed my attempt.”
And temperatures like that are warm compared to Saturn’s surface. Depending on the depth of the atmosphere, it could be
anywhere from -218.47F to -308.47. Unlike an Alberta Clipper here on Earth, Saturn is constantly having hurricane-like storms.
However, few are easily visible in the average telescope. “The storm is enormous.” said John. “It’s no wonder we can see it from
Earth, since Saturn at the time of this shot was about 865.2 million miles away or 1.392 billion km from us!” from UniverseToday.com
