Saturnian turbulences...

Caption NASA originale:"With no solid land to obstruct their progress, dark vortices often roll through Saturn's Atmosphere for months or years, before merging with other vortices. On Earth, the continents usually halt the progress of large storms, like hurricanes. Vortices like these are part of the general circulation pattern of East-West flowing cloud bands, called jets, on Saturn.

The image was taken using a spectral filter sensitive to wavelengths of infrared light centered at 939 nanometers. The image was obtained with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on Aug. 16, 2006 at a distance of approximately 259.000 Km (about 161.000 miles) from Saturn. Image scale is roughly 12 Km (about 7 miles) per pixel".

Nota: quando la NASA parla di "distanza da Saturno" (come da Giove, Urano e Nettuno) essa fa convenzionalmente riferimento alla distanza che intercorre fra Sonda e "clouds' top", ovvero lo strato più alto (e l'ultimo) di nuvole, superato il quale inizia lo spazio esterno. In caso di corpi rocciosi, invece, la distanza è riferita allo spazio esistente fra Sonda e "datum" (o altitudine zero) del corpo celeste considerato.