Nov 9 2006
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(New page: NASA announced that its ESA spacecraft had captured the first images ever taken of a hurricane-like storm on another planet. The images revealed a storm on Saturn with an eye ringed by...)
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NASA announced that its ESA spacecraft had captured the first images ever taken of a hurricane-like storm on another planet. The images revealed a storm on Saturn with an eye ringed by towering clouds, winds blowing at a speed around 550 kilometers per hour (350 miles per hour), and a width of nearly 8,000 kilometers (5,000 miles)—nearly two thirds of the diameter of Earth. Despite its hurricane-like appearance, scientists did not classify the storm as a hurricane, because hurricanes on Earth form over water and drift around Earth’s surface. The storm on Saturn remained at the planet’s south pole and could not have formed over water, since Saturn is primarily composed of gases. ESA had obtained the photographs over a 3-hour period on 11 October 2006.
Will Dunham, “An Eye on Saturn Drawing the Focus of Astrophysicists,” Houston Chronicle, 12 November 2006; NASA, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, “NASA Sees into the Eye of a Monster Storm on Saturn,” 9 November 2006, http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/news/newsreleases/newsrelease20061109/ (accessed 21 April 2010).
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