Saturn's north polar vortex (an animation)

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Saturn's north polar vortex (an animation)

Cassini took 14 images of Saturn's north polar vortex on November 27, 2012 over a period of many hours as the planet rotated beneath it. The 14 images have been processed to remove the geometric effects of Cassini's oblique viewpoint and of Saturn's rotation, holding the outer bright ring of white clouds fixed. With these motions removed, you can see individual vortices rotating and shearing, and the central clouds rotating faster than the outer ones.

NASA / JPL / SSI / Kevin McAbee

Here are two stages in the production of this animation, shown at low resolution to save bandwidth. Here are the original 14 images, animated:

NASA / JPL / SSI / Kevin McAbee

Saturn's north polar vortex (animation) - original frames

And the 14 images, stretched and aligned on the white band of clouds:

NASA / JPL / SSI / Kevin McAbee

Saturn's north polar vortex (animation) - aligned

Copyright holder: Kevin McAbee

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Contact us to request publication permission from the copyright holder. Original image data dated on or about November 27, 2012