"It's intriguing," said Andrew Ingersoll, a member of Cassini's imaging team at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. "Convection is an important part of the planet's energy budget because the warm upwelling air carries heat from the interior." Last year, scientists had found a hexagon-shaped cloud structure over the north pole that was believed to be stable. Infrared imagery taken by Cassini, however, shows clouds inside the hexagon whipping around at more than 300 mph and encircling another killer cyclone. Oddly, neither the fast-moving clouds inside the hexagon nor the newly discovered cyclone seem to disrupt the six-sided hexagon, scientists said. "There's very unusual, very dramatic, very dynamic things going on here," Baines said. Scientists plan to keep watch on the storms to see how the features evolve as the seasons change. Saturn's southern fall equinox occurs in August 2009. Related Links: |
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