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Boosted by jwz:
markmccaughrean ("Mark McCaughrean") wrote:

I definitely wasn't supposed to be doing this this afternoon, but ... 🤷‍♂️🙂

A time lapse movie of the northern hemisphere of Saturn, showing a full rotation of the famous polar hexagon, a very cool fluid dynamics phenomenon in the planet's atmosphere 🪐🐻‍❄️

Taken by the NASA/ESA/ASI Cassini spacecraft over a 12.5 hour period on 3 & 4 April 2014: 35 ISS WAC images 512x512 pixels, CB2 filter at 752nm 🛰️📷

Credit: NASA, JPL-Caltech, SSI, Mark McCaughrean

#SpaceScience

Attachments:

• gifv: A time lapse movie showing the northern hemisphere of Saturn rotating over a 12.5 hour period. There are atmospheric bands at lower latitudes, with small spots and storms too, and then close to the north pole, there is a giant hexagonal structure in the atmosphere. At its centre is a large vortex. The rings of Saturn are seen above the planet and the latter casts a shadow on the rings to the left. The data have been given a silver blue tint, even though they are original monochrome.