Jupiter's Great Red Spot may get the majority of the accolades for being the biggest storm in our solar system but Saturn also has an enormous hurricane of its own at its north pole that may have been existed for years, according to Ars Technica.
The eye of Saturn's enormous hurricane is roughly 1,250 miles across making it 20 times larger than the average hurricane eye on Earth. To put that into perspective the eye of Saturn's hurricane, the calm part in the middle of the enormous storm, would stretch from New York City to Omaha, Neb., according to NASA.
"We did a double take when we saw this vortex because it looks so much like a hurricane on Earth," Andrew Ingersoll, a Cassini imaging team member, said. "But there it is at Saturn, on a much larger scale, and it is somehow getting by on the small amounts of water vapor in Saturn's hydrogen atmosphere."
The Saturn hurricane has many of the same features as hurricanes on Earth including a having an eye with no clouds in it, high clouds spiraling around the eye and a counter-clockwise spin. One of the most major differences separating Saturn's hurricane from the ones that occur on Earth, other than the sheer size of course, is that Saturn's hurricane has not moved. Hurricanes on Earth tend to drift to the north; Saturn's has remained stuck on the north pole, according to NASA.
"The polar hurricane has nowhere else to go, and that's likely why it's stuck at the pole," Kunio Sayanagi, a member of the Cassini imaging team, said.
The view of the polar storm was made possible by the unique orbit that Cassini makes around Saturn. The satellite's orbit was changed so that it would be able to observe the poles.
"Such a stunning and mesmerizing view of the hurricane-like storm at the north pole is only possible because Cassini is on a sportier course, with orbits tilted to loop the spacecraft above and below Saturn's equatorial plane," Scott Edgington, Cassini deputy project scientist, said. "You cannot see the polar regions very well from an equatorial orbit. Observing the planet from different vantage points reveals more about the cloud layers that cover the entirety of the planet."
Other storms on Saturn can be just as fierce, with the ability to last for months and change the weather of the entire planet. These are called Great White Spots and they are quite rare, only six have been observed since 1876. The Cassini orbiter was able to observe one of these storms that measured over 7000 km at the head, according to Ars Technica.
The Great White Spot had winds of over 400 km/hour and the winds moved in a direction making it an anti-cyclone. The storm was fed by winds that brought warm material up from the core of Saturn, much like how terrestrial storms are fed by warm ocean waters, reports Ars Technica.
Video taken by Cassini of the hurricane can be seen here.
