Saturn Storm Dec 14th in very poor seeing

[Quark]

Hi All,

Imaged the storm in very poor seeing this morning, the storm is so bright that even in such horrendous conditions it is still clearly visible in the live feed. The jet stream is currently parked overhead and we are in a period of very unsettled weather, very unusual for the Australian outback , had the odd shower pass through this morning and for a while it looked like the clouds would not break up at all.

Have attached 1 RGB & 807nm IR data set but these were also effected to some degree by cloud. I apologize for the quality of the images but even these clearly show the elongated state of this storm. I believe Anthony had better seeing this morning, he is about 1000 km to the East of me, his data would suggest this is now 2 storms. I hope for some better conditions over the next few weeks.

Thanks for looking.
Regards
Trevor

[mswhin63]

Very clear storm, cant help the conditions. Nice job

[michaellxv]

Not much you can do about the weather. The storm looks bigger in this image.

[bird]

Still shows up very nicely in the images Trev, well done considering!

cheers, Bird

[DarkRevenge]

What a storm! Visible even in that conditions!
Thanks for sharing, Trevor.

Cheers.

[Clayton]

Nice catch Trevor

[Shiraz]

Hi Trevor. Crikey that must be bright. Do you know what mechanism is behind the bright colour - is it lightning, albedo change, chemistry or a combination? edit: did a bit of reading - convection driven ammonia ice clouds?
regards Ray

[Quark]

Thanks Malcolm.



Thanks Michaell.



Thanks Bird, really hanging out to catch this in good seeing, Dec 22nd looks promising.



Thanks Luis.



Thanks Clayton.



Thanks Ray. Saturn has a hydrogen rich atmosphere with traces of methane & ammonia. There are 3 distinct cloud layers. An upper layer of ammonia ice crystals, an intermediate layer of ammonium hydro sulfide ice crystals with a lower layer of water ice crystals.

The SED's (Saturn Electrostatic Discharge) detected by the Cassini RPWS (Radio & Plasma Wave Science) instrument are the result of lightning caused by the rapid vertical motion of material originating from the water ice cloud layer at a depth of about 200km. This rapid vertical motion is caused by a poorly understood heat source deep within the atmosphere.

The material surging upward from the water ice crystal cloud layer punches through the upper ammonia ice crystal cloud layer and mushrooms out generating the white spots ( SED's related storm clouds) that we image from Earth.

Earlier this year while we were tracking an active SED's related storm another instrument onboard Cassin (Infrared spectrometer), which is operated by a team at JPL, was able to be used to analyze this material that was in effect dredged up from deep within the atmosphere. This was a first for the Cassini mission.

I have attached a link to a JPL news release regarding this and what there IR spectrometer found.

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2010-143

[Matt Wastell]

Wow! I have not seen anything about this storm until now! Lot's for the planetary guys lately!
Thanks for the images!