Astronomers have detected warm storms in the northern hemisphere on the ring planet, but from now on calm will return.
As on our planet, there are seasons on Saturn. This is because Saturn’s axis – like Earth’s – is tilted. At one moment the northern hemisphere faces the sun, and at the next moment the southern hemisphere. However, seasons last longer on circular planets. Saturn takes thirty years to orbit the Sun, which means it experiences winter for more than seven years.
The change of seasons has a huge impact on the earth. We announced earlier this year that the speaker was now visible again on Ring B. This mysterious phenomenon was actually photographed by Voyager 1 in the 1980s, but has yet to be explained. Now British scientists have again discovered changes in the ring planet.
The research team from Leicester used the MIRI instrument on the James Webb Telescope to study Saturn’s atmosphere in infrared light. This gave the team a good picture of the temperature, cloudiness and gas concentrations in the atmosphere, also known as the stratosphere. The image shows a warm tornado 1,500 km wide in the Arctic. A wider area of warm gas appears around it: the so-called Arctic Stratospheric Vortex. As the autumnal equinox approaches, the Northern Hemisphere vortices will cool and dissipate.
This is the first time scientists have been able to properly observe the transition from summer to autumn in Saturn’s northern hemisphere. Thirty years ago there were no super telescopes like James Webb. And the Cassini spacecraft? It only reached the ring planet a decade later.
2023-09-17 03:40:14
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