Nov12th 2008.
http://www.earthfiles.com/
“We've never seen an aurora like this elsewhere.
This one covers an enormous area across the pole. Our current ideas
on what forms Saturn's aurorae predict that this region should be empty,
so finding such a bright one here is a fantastic surprise.”
- Tom Stallard, U. K. University of Leicester
Northern polar region of Saturn shows both the aurora
and underlying atmosphere, seen at two different wavelengths of infrared
light as captured by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. Credit: NASA, JPL, Univ. of Arizona.
This new infrared image by the Cassini spacecraft will be reported in the Nov. 13 issue of the journal Nature. One of the contributors is Nick Achilleos, Ph.D., on the Cassini magnetometer team at the University College London. He says, “Saturn's unique auroral features are telling us there is something special and unforeseen about this planet's magnetosphere and the way it interacts with the solar wind and the planet's atmosphere. Trying to explain its origin will no doubt lead us to physics which uniquely operates in the environment of Saturn.”