At the centre of the famous ‘pentagon’ situated at Saturn’s north pole (pictured above) lies a swirling vortex of cloud, and yesterday (November 27, 2012) the Cassini space-probe took a series of ‘close-up’ photos (that is, from just 361,000 kilometers away). I threw together a quick (non-real time) animation from Cassini’s raw images archive – click on it if you want to see the bigger version (6MB):
‘Looking down’ upon the turbulent surface via these images, I couldn’t help but be reminded of more than a few planetary descents in science fiction novels and movies, most notably the Prometheus capsule in Stanislav Lem’s Solaris, the ‘express elevator to hell’ from Aliens, and definitely Operation Deep Sounding in Paul McAuley’s The Quiet War. Imagine navigating your ship into the jaws of that maelstrom…
(via @elakdawalla / The Planetary Society)
