Sharpest Image Ever Of Ringed Planet

A picture, they say, is worth a thousand words. Well, take a look at this and start talking.

The latest, sharpest, most detailed picture of Saturn ever taken comes from the Cassini-Huygens probe, set to orbit the ringed giant on July 1st.

New Scientist Magazine reports the image shows two grey spots in the planet's roiling atmosphere -- tiny to the eye, but, given the fact the diameter of Saturn is about ten times that of the Earth, they're about the size of our moon.

"They're probably storm systems in the atmosphere," says Fred Taylor, a planetary scientist at the University of Oxford, UK. "The Hubble Space Telescope did see some storms whose duration was on the order of months," he told New Scientist.

Cassini, the size of a city bus, will be able to track those storms on a continuous basis once locked in orbit around Saturn.

"The real excitement's still to come," says Taylor. Cassini will do for Saturn what Galileo did for Jupiter during its 14-year long mission. Taylor hopes to compare the data from both planets, on the chance scientists might get a better idea of just how they evolved.

One big difference is the colored bands of clouds swirling around Saturn. They're much more narrow than those of Jupiter and Saturn has more of them. Scientists now think that's attributable to the winds on the ringed planet. But there could be great differences in what makes up those swirling bands of color.

FMI: www.newscientist.com