Astronomy Picture of the Day - Aurora around Saturn's North Pole

NASA ^ | 8 Dec, 2024 | Image Credit: NASA, ESA, Hubble, OPAL Program, J. DePasquale (STScI), L. Lamy (Obs. Paris)

[MtnClimber]

Explanation: Are Saturn's auroras like Earth's? To help answer this question, the Hubble Space Telescope and the Cassini spacecraft monitored Saturn's North Pole simultaneously during Cassini's final orbits around the gas giant in September 2017. During this time, Saturn's tilt caused its North Pole to be clearly visible from Earth. The featured image is a composite of ultraviolet images of auroras and optical images of Saturn's clouds and rings, all taken by Hubble. Like on Earth, Saturn's northern auroras can make total or partial rings around the pole. Unlike on Earth, however, Saturn's auroras are frequently spirals -- and more likely to peak in brightness just before midnight and dawn. In contrast to Jupiter's auroras, Saturn's auroras appear better related to connecting Saturn's internal magnetic field to the nearby, variable, solar wind. Saturn's southern auroras were similarly imaged back in 2004 when the planet's South Pole was clearly visible to Earth.

[MtnClimber]

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For more detail go to the link and click on the image for a high definition image. You can then move the magnifying glass cursor then click to zoom in and click again to zoom out. When zoomed in you can scan by moving the side bars on the bottom and right side of the image.

[MtnClimber]

[MtnClimber]

Pinging the APOD list

🪐 🌟 🌌 🍔

[Billthedrill]

That’s no aura. That’s a fully armed and operational battle station. Or a giant eyeball. Could go either way.

[CatHerd]

Wow. What an amazing photo! Thanks for posting this.

[Ezekiel]

Saturn's North Pole

Looks like they're burning the midnight oil up there.

Tis the season!

[No name given]

Wow.

[AFB-XYZ]

Incredible. Gorgeous beyond comprehension.

[telescope115]

I’ve often imagined the rings as being a sort of dish, or reflector for sending and receiving transmissions from another part of the galaxy, set up long ago by an ancient, highly advanced alien civilization.

I don’t get out much…

[gundog]

Gonna be a helluva big fish....

[ryderann]

A dish with a scoop of peach ice cream. topped with a bit of blue curacao.

[jmacusa]

I for one welcome our new planetary overlords.