Killing the hurricane at the south pole of Saturn
Cassini observations show that Saturn’s polar regions contain giant cyclones and unusual cloud configurations, including dark eyes that bring to mind the eyes of earthly hurricanes. Both on Earth and on Saturn, these eyes are regions of reduced cloud cover resulting from descending motions. Cassini images of the south polar regions also showed that circular cloud bands at the edge of the eye cast very long shadows. This led to the conclusion that there were towering convective storms reaching into the stratosphere, producing eyewalls that were casting shadows, much like hurricanes on earth, but on a vastly larger scale...
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