Out there...

[bruorton]

Imagine a hurricane... with 350 mph winds... the size of the planet Earth.  Fortunately, this sucker's raging at the south pole of Saturn, a good safe distance from us.  It was uncovered by the Cassini spacecraft that is in the middle of its 4 year tour of Saturn's environs, and which is providing all sorts of very cool photos, including a shot of the seasonal blue shading in the planet's northern latitudes.  Neat!

In other solar system news, remember hearing about the new "planet" that was discovered a while back?  It was just a chunk of rock way out there, and it was hard to seriously consider adding it as a 10th planet -- the problem being that it was just a little larger than Pluto.  It raised a ruckus amongst astronomers, but a decent compromise was struck, creating a new "dwarf planet" category in which Pluto got downgraded, but not forgotten; it also upgraded Ceres, the largest rock in the asteroid belt, to dwarf planet status (it's the smallest of the 3).

Curious to learn more about our new dwarf, I found that its name -- taken from the classical pantheon as usual -- was whimsically selected to be Eris... Greek goddess of discord.  It hadn't been found before because it is way out on an eliptical orbit that carries it as much as 3 times farther out than Pluto, although at its closest (around 280 years from now) it will approach the sun about as close as Neptune's orbit.  Wikipedia, as always, has more, including a little animation demonstrating how Eris was discovered and amusing notes on its earlier name, Xena, and that of its moon, Gabrielle -- now named Dysnomia after Eris' daughter.

Comments

[kaph.livejournal.com]

Holy crap is that a big hurricane!

Why didn't you use your galaxy usericon?

[bruorton.livejournal.com]

Um... meant to, but was running home to have lunch with you and A.L. Just changed it.