Note: I am posting my old blog entries from elsewhere on the internet. This entry was originally posted on 10/13/08
The Enceladus flyby was successful and the instrument teams are pouring through the data. Hooray!
Here is an awesome movie from the north pole of Saturn itself, assembled from images taken back in June. Both poles have gigantic, long-lived whirlpool-like storms rotating at ~ 530 km/hr (more than twice as fast as the highest winds in terrestrial cyclones or hurricanes). The structure of these storms is very similar to hurricanes, with features like eyewalls, but the clouds are probably ammonium hydrosulfide and there’s no ocean to power the storms; instead they might be powered by intense thunderstorm-like processes deeper in the saturnian atmosphere. The north polar cyclone on Saturn is also surrounded by a hexagonal cloud which doesn’t seem to be moving at all. You can read the press release here, and more info on the movie here.