Astronomers spotted a warm cyclone in the northern hemisphere on the ring planet, but from now on, calm will return.
Just like on our planet, there are seasons on Saturn. This is because Saturn’s axis – like that of Earth – is tilted. One moment the northern hemisphere is pointed towards the sun, the next moment the southern hemisphere. However, seasons last much longer on the ring planet. Saturn takes thirty years to orbit the sun, which means that it is winter for more than seven years.
The changing of the seasons has a major impact on the planet. Earlier this year we announced that spokes are visible in the B-ring again. These mysterious phenomena were already photographed by Voyager 1 in the 1980s, but an explanation has still not been found. Now British scientists have once again spotted changes on 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 temperatures, clouds and gas concentrations in the atmosphere, also known as the stratosphere. The images show a warm 1,500 kilometer wide cyclone at the North Pole. A larger area of warm gases is visible around it: the so-called north polar stratospheric vortex. As the autumnal equinox approaches, the Northern Hemisphere vortices will cool and dissipate.
It is the first time that scientists have been able to properly monitor the transition from summer to autumn in Saturn’s northern hemisphere. Thirty years ago there was no super telescope like James Webb. And the Cassini spacecraft? It did not arrive at the ring planet until a decade later.
2023-09-16 17:03:33
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