Summer on Saturn and an icy pole
24 July 2020
Hubble and Juno send us more arresting images.
redit: NASA, ESA, A. Simon (Goddard Space Flight Center), M.H. Wong (University of California, Berkeley) and the OPAL Team
Sometimes all you need for a great photo is an interesting subject. Here we present two such examples.
Above is a striking image of Saturn in its northern hemisphere summer, with its finely etched concentric ring structure nicely resolved and two of its icy moons just visible: Mimas at right, and Enceladus at bottom.
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope captured a slight reddish haze over the planet’s north in this colour composite, while the south pole has a blue hue.
The red may be due to heating from increased sunlight, which could alter the atmospheric circulation or perhaps remove ices from aerosols in the atmosphere. Or the increased sunlight in the summer may change the amount of photochemical haze produced.
More:
https://cosmosmagazine.com/space/astronomy/summer-on-saturn-and-an-icy-pole/
