Posted on 02/04/2005 9:33:28 AM PST by NormsRevenge
HONOLULU - Astronomers using a giant telescope atop a volcano have discovered a hot spot at the tip of Saturn's south pole.
The infrared images captured by the Keck I telescope at the W.M. Keck Observatory atop Mauna Kea on the Big Island suggest a warm polar vortex a large-scale weather pattern likened to a jet stream on Earth that occurs in the upper atmosphere. It's the first such hot vortex ever discovered in the solar system.
The team of scientists say the images are the sharpest thermal views of Saturn ever taken from the ground. Their work will be a published in Friday's editions of the journal Science.
This warm polar cap is believed to contain the highest temperatures on Saturn; the scientists did not give a temperature estimate.
On Earth, the Arctic Polar Vortex is typically located over eastern North America in Canada and plunges cold arctic air to the northern Plains in the United States.
Polar vortices are found on Earth, Jupiter, Mars and Venus, and are colder than their surroundings. The new images from the Keck Observatory show the first evidence of a polar vortex at much warmer temperatures.
"Saturn's is the first hot polar vortex that we've seen because it's been sitting in the sunlight for about 18 years," said Glenn S. Orton, a scientist at NASA (news - web sites)'s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and lead author.
Saturn, which takes many earth years to orbit the sun, just had its summer solstice in 2002.
"If the increased southern temperatures are solely the result of seasonality, then the temperature should increase gradually with increasing latitude, but it doesn't," Orton said. "We see that the temperature increases abruptly by several degrees near 70 degrees south and again at 87 degrees south.
"A really hot thing within a couple degrees of the pole is something I don't understand at all," he said.
Scientists may learn more from the data coming from the infrared spectrometer on the Cassini spacecraft currently orbiting Saturn, information that is expected to complement the Keck discovery, Orton said.
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On the Net:
Keck Observatory: http://www.keckobservatory.org
Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Saturn page: http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov
Somebody tell Ted Kennedy. He's always looking for hot spots.
Is Hawaii better able to discover this than Cassini currently orbiting Saturn, just curious?
LOL ! Looks like oil to me . . let's invade ! < / liberal conspiracy theory >
Well, it's better than finding a hot spot on Uranus.
:)
If you look at it just right, you can see stars....
Perhaps whatever it was actually penetrated the atmoshpere at the pole. There must be objects moving in orbits that are not along the plane of the ecliptic.
Just ask the folks who competed in the Wing Bowl this morning....
Women, children, the elderly, and minorities most affected. And it's all the fault of Chimpy McBushitler. . .
What's the bet that someone on DU has ALREADY posted this ???(evil grin)
Indeed. . .
It's FULL OF STARS !!!!
They must have a lot of SUV on Saturn -- plus a lot of Freon in their ACs.
Denny Crane: "There are two places to find the truth. First God and then Fox News."
It's possible. The Schumaker comet that hit Jupiter struck around a high latitude. Jupiter swallowed that without a trace in a couple days, so, if this hot spot on Saturn is due to something like that, it would have to have been fairly massive. Perhaps it is more like those stellar objects with an x-ray beam coming out of the poles, a quasar kind of reaction.
Funding cut.
My theory is that over the period of increased heating by its summers the gasses expand and by the force of its gravitation field heat up,instead of the heat and gasses expelling in an outward motion towards space they "pool" at its poles to perform a controlled venting where as the atmosphere of Saturn doesnt ignite or feed upon itself thus maintaning its large mass over eons.
Interesting. :-)
Thanks for the ping.
Perhaps the Fermi Paradox has now been solved?
More likely Maxwell's demons...
Still in the Saturnian system...
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