While Jupiter has the famous Great Red Spot cyclonic storm, the other giant planets have less turbulent-looking surfaces. But they do have mighty storms all their own. According to a new study, mega-storms on Saturn can flare up every 20-30 years and have long-lasting effects that persist for centuries. The astronomers looked at Saturn's radio emissions and mapped the ammonia gas distribution. They found that the storms churn up this gas and can be used to trace when storms happened in the past.
first observed by Gian Domenico Cassini in 1665
, and except for a period between 1713 to 1830, it has been observed continuously ever since. Even if Cassini’s storm is not the one we see today, the current red spot has been around for nearly two centuries. While great storms appear now and then on Saturn and other gas planets, they don’t have the staying power of Jupiter’s great storm. Or so we thought.
Jupiter’s spot is prominent because of its deep red coloring, which stands out against the planet’s pale coloring in visible light. We still don’t know the origin of its coloring, but we know the storm draws molecules up from deep in Jupiter’s atmosphere. Ultraviolet light interacting with these molecules could create reddish-brown tholins, such as we see within Titan’s atmosphere. Without its high-contrast appearance, we might not have discovered the red spot until more modern times.
Saturn also has great storms from time to time. The most recent appearance was during the Cassini–Huygens mission when a trail of white pierced Saturn’s atmosphere and was dubbed the Great White Spot. A similar spot was observed by the Hubble Space Telescope in 1994. Observations of white storms on Saturn have been recorded as far back as 1876. They were thought to be separate storms since they were observed at different latitudes.
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