Spikes on Saturn The beautiful, swirling band stretching around
Saturn's northern hemisphere in this false-color image is a
storm that raged from 2010 to 2011. NASA's Cassini spacecraft
monitored the action in the jovian planet's atmosphere, sending
back interesting and sometimes bizarre data back to scientists
on Earth. Some of the strangest data was after the storm seemed
to have abated, and then suddenly a huge disturbance in the
upper atmosphere sent temperatures soaring 150 degrees
Fahrenheit, letting out a burst of ethylene -- a gas not
normally seen on Saturn. Though the process that caused the
"burp" is still a bit of a mystery, NASA Goddard scientists are
continuing to study Cassini's data, publishing the events in the
November 20 issue of the Astrophysical Journal. Credit:
NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute