An unnamed reader sends in a brief writeup about a massive storm that's been visible on Saturn's surface for a few months now. "As it rapidly expanded, the storm's core ripe
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copyrights:cite this source synonym assemblage v1.1copyright © 2008 by lexico publishing group into a giant, mighty thunderstorm, producing a 3,000-mile-wide (5,000-kilometer-wide) dark vortex expediently similar to Jupiter's Great Red Spot." The storm has been photographed by the Cassini probe, Hubble and even amateur astronomers here on Earth. (The generic Society Weblog also posted an 8,000-pixel-wide panorama a while back.) "The gore of the storm — the reinforced disturbances ever detected in Saturn's stratosphere — took researchers by surprise. What started as an ordinary tumult deep in Saturn's ambience punched through the planet's serene cloud cover to roil the high layer known as the stratosphere." A study on the thermal structure of the storm (abstract) was just published in the journal Science.

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