Quote:
Originally Posted by renormalised
Trevor, great to see you do so well 
Wonderful effort with the imaging of the storm on Saturn. Yet another one. One wonders what's going on beneath those upper cloud decks, must be some heavy duty activity in the lower layers of the atmosphere going on. Lots of heating. Given the density of the lower layers, it's probably akin to a deep mantle plume rising through the asthenosphere here on Earth.
Anyway, what degree to course did you do at Swinburne??. Marvelous that you did so well. Ever thought about carrying it further and doing more study?? |
Hi renormalised,
Thanks.
Interesting things are happening within the atmosphere. The Cassini RPWS team are hoping to gain a greater understanding of these processes by analysing the data from their instrument.
Saturn is a net emitter of energy, it emits more energy than it absorbs from the Sun. It should be cooler than it is. Being smaller than Jupiter it should have cooled quicker. Another interesting point is the levels of helium in the atmosphere are way lower than they should be.
It is thought that Saturn did, in fact, cool down quicker than Jupiter and that this cooling condensed the helium that was originally in the upper atmosphere.
The condensed helium fell deeper into the planet, during this process, the gravitational energy of the raining out of the helium was turned into heat energy, (not to sure about the physics involved in this process) however such a process is thought to be able to account quite well for the amount of heat being emitted by Saturn.
Swinburne accepted my enrolment in their Graduate Certificate of Science in Astronomy program, this is post graduate but I got in based on my 20 years experience as an amateur, at the time. There was also the proviso that to maintain my enrolment I had to achieve a minimum of credit passes.
Initially I was full of trepidation and felt like a fish out of water, however the Swinburne unit instructors and project supervisors that I encountered were very supportive and in the end I really thrived on it and will never forget the experience.
I did one unit per semester and after two years of very hard work graduated with straight High Distinctions, my lowest unit mark being 91.
One day I may return and do my Masters but at the moment my sons education is much more important than that of an old fossil
Regards
Trevor