Let's Talk the Most Photogenic Planet Saturn
Earth may be suffering from tremendous tragic stories yet it is still a perfect planet. It is the only planet that we, humans can live in. However, did you know that there are more planets than our science book provided when we were in grade school?
Believe or not, there are thousands of planets in the universe. Scientists are continuously searching for more. Due to numerous planets identified since 2008, they decided to name them with numbers and letters such as 186f, 186b, 186c, 186b to differentiate the planets and they are collectively called Kepler planets.
I am not going to talk about Kepler planets, I want to discuss one unique famous beautiful planet in our solar system and has been considered as the most photogenic heavenly body. It is the sixth planet from the sun and the second largest planet in the solar system, it is also known as the ring planet. I'm talking about planet Saturn.
Earth is not the only planet that changes season, surprisingly, Saturn too. Though the planet takes 30 years to complete one orbit from the sun, Cassini wants to witness its change of season from the storm chasing the planet, ahead to spring and next is summer. Scientist are very curious on how the ring orbits around the planet that could change in season. I also I wonder if there are living organisms in there too.
1980 to 1981, when the Voyager spacecraft flew past Saturn, they discovered that the planet’s North Pole was capped with a gigantic hexagon-shaped storm, the mother of all polar vortexes. It is a massive hurricane four times the size of the Earth bordered by a jet stream blowing 220 miles per hour. The voyagers left Saturn with winter and darkness on the north pole.
In 2010, after the storm, Ana Aguiar of Lisbon University and colleagues, said “the position of the hexagon on Saturn corresponded to the latitude of a narrow and very speedy jet stream. They suggested that friction with slower-moving atmosphere on either side of the jet stream would create eddies, miniature hurricanes, that would push the jet stream north and south as it went around the planet, resulting in a wave shape.”
NASA has been cruising Saturn for almost 10 years and it was in 2004 when Cassini first arrived at Saturn and they discovered that the planet is just ahead of spring, and they are very eager to see how the hexagon will rotate to change into summer. Still, they are not sure if the planet has been affected by the storm and how the planet changes season. The Cassini team hopes to learn more about Saturn. I know for sure that there is always something in the beautiful and photogenic “Ring planet”.
