space-pics: Saturn’s North Pole Storm. Absolutely…
Saturn’s North Pole Storm. Absolutely Mesmerizing.
http://ift.tt/Xyeaq9
#nasa #THIS IS FOR REALS LIES? #0.O #space photography (via @redshoesnblueskies)
Yes! It’s technically a false-color image to bring out the detail, but it’s a real photo returned by Cassini. From nasa.gov ( <– very much worth clicking on for the bigger version of the image):
The Rose
The spinning vortex of Saturn’s north polar storm resembles a deep red rose of giant proportions surrounded by green foliage in this false-color image from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. Measurements have sized the eye at a staggering 1,250 miles (2,000 kilometers) across with cloud speeds as fast as 330 miles per hour (150 meters per second).This image is among the first sunlit views of Saturn’s north pole captured by Cassini’s imaging cameras. When the spacecraft arrived in the Saturnian system in 2004, it was northern winter and the north pole was in darkness. Saturn’s north pole was last imaged under sunlight by NASA’s Voyager 2 in 1981; however, the observation geometry did not allow for detailed views of the poles. Consequently, it is not known how long this newly discovered north-polar hurricane has been active.
The images were taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Nov. 27, 2012, using a combination of spectral filters sensitive to wavelengths of near-infrared light. The images filtered at 890 nanometers are projected as blue. The images filtered at 728 nanometers are projected as green, and images filtered at 752 nanometers are projected as red. In this scheme, red indicates low clouds and green indicates high ones.
Here’s a wider-angle view in true color, taken in July 2013:
Reposted from http://ift.tt/1Kza5HH.
