The perfect storm
My son is fascinated by this image over here, depicting Jupiter during Voyager 1’s approach in 1979. The other day, when that astounding, jaw-dropping picture of the huge, hurricane-like storm sitting atop Saturn’s north pole was released, showing a giant cyclonic vortex almost as wide as our entire continent, I showed it to him and he seemed strangely nonplussed. Then I had an idea: maybe it’s not as fascinating because it’s not moving. And that’s a hard thing to remedy, since Cassini is taking still pictures and not video, right? But hey, I’m an old video guy. I can brute-force this thing and “flipbook” it just like NASA and JPL did back in ’79.
I don’t often ask you guys to swallow a 13-meg animated GIF (see note below), but what you’re about to see after the jump is kind of nifty. It might just about be worth it. … Read more
