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Saturn's atmosphere exhibits a banded pattern similar to Jupiter's, but Saturn's bands are much fainter and are much wider near the equator. The nomenclature used to describe these bands is the same as on Jupiter. Saturn's finer cloud patterns were not observed until the flybys of the Voyager spacecraft during the 1980s.
Saturn's internal magnetic field deflects the solar wind, a stream of ionized particles emitted by the Sun, away from its surface, preventing it from interacting directly with its atmosphere and instead creating its own region, called a magnetosphere, composed of a plasma very different from that of the solar wind. [12]
The sun passes south to north through the ring plane when Saturn's heliocentric longitude is 173.6 degrees (e.g. 11 August 2009), about the time Saturn crosses from Leo to Virgo. 15.7 years later Saturn's longitude reaches 353.6 degrees and the sun passes to the south side of the ring plane.
In April of last year, Cassini spent 44 hours staring at Saturn's atmosphere and capturing in-depth images. The mission to Saturn is a joint venture between NASA, the European Space Agency and the ...
The size of solid bodies does not include an object's atmosphere. For example, Titan looks bigger than Ganymede, but its solid body is smaller. For the giant planets, the "radius" is defined as the distance from the center at which the atmosphere reaches 1 bar of atmospheric pressure. [11]
Ring particles modifying Saturn’s upper atmosphere, changing its composition, scientists say Saturn’s rings are breaking apart and heating up planet’s thin atmosphere, study finds Skip to ...
One hypothesis, developed at Oxford University, is that the hexagon forms where there is a steep latitudinal gradient in the speed of the atmospheric winds in Saturn's atmosphere. [22] Similar regular shapes were created in the laboratory when a circular tank of liquid was rotated at different speeds at its centre and periphery.
Saturn’s autumnal equinox is expected to occur on May 6, 2025. ... “On Earth, when those charged particles hit the atmosphere this is visible in the northern hemisphere as the aurora borealis ...