"The Cassini orbiter flew over the south pole of Saturn and found something that had only ever been seen on Earth before: a hurricane with a well-defined eye wall to it."
"Saturn has equinoxes and solstices, but because Saturn takes nearly 30 years to complete one orbit around the Sun, seasons last more than 7 years on Saturn apiece."
"Just as Earth has two very different poles, so too does Saturn. We can only take images of whichever pole is tipped toward the Sun at that very moment."
The Cassini-Huygens mission, launched in 1997, aimed to study Saturn in detail rather than just fly by. Arriving in 2004, it conducted extensive observations until 2017. Notably, it discovered a hurricane at Saturn's south pole, a phenomenon previously only observed on Earth. Saturn's axial tilt of 26.7 degrees results in long seasons, each lasting over seven years. The mission captured images of Saturn's poles, revealing significant differences between them, depending on which pole was facing the Sun during its observations.
Read at Big Think
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