Colossal Storm Rages Over Saturn’s Surface
The largest storm seen on Saturn in more than 21 years has now been encircling the planet for a record-breaking 200 days.
This mosaic shows the storm’s effects encircling the planet and was created using 126 images taken in succession as different parts of Saturn’s northern hemisphere rotated into Cassini’s view.
Images taken using red, green and blue spectral filters are usually combined to create a natural color view. Because visible red light images were not available, images taken using a spectral filter sensitive to wavelengths of near-infrared light centered at 752 nanometers were used in place of red. So the color is close to natural color, but is not exact.
The head of the storm is near the center, and a train of vortexes appears as blue spots just to the south of the head. These blue spots are parts of the storm’s tail that have already encircled the planet and are approaching from the west. The blue color indicates they have some high, semi-transparent haze but no thick clouds underneath because there are no white or yellow colored clouds shown here.
real colors from Nasa pic
