Storm on Saturn, and a Voorwerp

There are a couple of great new posts up on Alice’s Astro Info by Alice Enevoldsen this week.
The first, Storm on Saturn—With a Tail, was posted Sunday. It’s a great summary of a new storm that turned up on Saturn at the end of 2010. It’s about the same size as the Great Red Spot on Jupiter.

Cassini captured this photo of the storm on Saturn on Christmas
 Eve, 2010. Photo: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute.

We tried to spot this storm from Seattle Astronomy headquarters in West Seattle during that rare, clear weather we had over the holidays. Alas, while we had a couple of good looks at Saturn, it was still pretty low in the sky, a bit murky, and we couldn’t make out enough detail to spot the storm. (St. Nick delivered a new Tele Vue 10mm Radian eyepiece we were hoping would help tease it out, but even great new optics didn’t get us there.) Even today Saturn isn’t rising until a little after midnight. It’s plenty high before sunrise, but we’re a lot better at staying up until 3 a.m. than we are at rising at 5:00, so we haven’t seen the ringed planet at its best, and probably won’t until it’s at opposition in early April.

We’re rolling the dice by waiting to try to see this storm. While the Red Spot has been around for centuries, this Saturn storm popped up out of nowhere and could fade back into the yellow-orange haze of Saturn just as quickly.

The other new article, posted today, is about Hanny’s Voorwerp. It looks kind of like an enormous cosmic frog in an amazing Hubble photograph included in the post, but in actual fact is a light echo. Enevoldsen is a physics and astronomy genius and explains the phenomenon very well. I just think it looks cool. And I like to type the word Voorwerp. Voorwerp, voorwerp, voorwerp. It’s Dutch for “object,” and Hanny’s Voorwerp was discovered by a Dutch schoolteacher using Galaxy Zoo.

Keep an eye on Alice’s Astro Info for great notes about what’s up in the sky.