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NASA spacecraft offers detailed views of Saturn's Great White Spot


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Los Angeles Times:

Saturn's Great White Spot, a recurring storm on that planet that has intrigued scientists since it was first observed in 1876, is a windy, towering cloud of ammonia and water spewing out super jolts of thunder and lightning. Now astronomers and NASA's Cassini spacecraft, which has been orbiting Saturn since 2004, have captured the most detailed views to date of the phenomenon.
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The luminous storm, which may be the gaseous planet's main mechanism for dissipating heat, occurs about once every Saturnian year, the equivalent of about 30 Earth years. The storms, however, do not follow a precise schedule. The latest round, the most intense on record, was first noticed by ground-based professional and amateur astronomers as a bright speck on Saturn's northern hemisphere on Dec. 5, about nine years before schedule. The previous storm occurred in 1990. <snip>

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Hmmm, Most intense on record and a sign of heat dissipation.... Most be that man made global warming going on... or the Sun.
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