Saturn's atmosphere at 1–10 kilometer resolution
Open accessAbstract
Abstract We present images of Saturn from the final phases of the Cassini mission, including images with 0.5 km per pixel resolution, as high as any Saturn images ever taken. Notable features are puffy clouds resembling terrestrial cumulus, shadows indicating cloud height, dome and bowl shaped cloud structures indicating upwelling and downwelling in anticyclones and cyclones respectively, and filaments, which are thread‐like clouds that remain coherent over distances of 20,000 km. From the coherence of the filaments, we give upper bounds on the diffusivity and kinetic energy dissipation. A radiative transfer analysis by Sanz‐Requena et al. (2018) indicates that methane‐band imagery is most useful in determining cloud and haze properties in the 60–250 mbar pressure range. Our methane‐band imagery finds haze in this pressure range covering 64°‐74°planetocentric latitude. Filaments lie within the haze, and cumulus clouds lie below it, but pressure levels are uncertain below the 250 mbar level.
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It was a stable system of three vortices observed in Cassini ISS images until 2017.
“It was a stable system of three vortices that has been observed in Cassini ISS images until 2017 (features A2, C1 and A3 in figure 1 in Ingersoll et al. 2018).”
From Saturn atmospheric dynamics one year after Cassini: Long-lived features and time variations in the drift of the Hexagon (2020) · cites this paper as Ingersoll et al. 2018
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The Dynamics of the Atmosphere of Saturn
Sánchez-Lavega, A. (2026) · doi:10.1093/9780197851500.003.0342
- Authors
- Ingersoll, A. P., Ewald, S. P., Sayanagi, K. M., & Blalock, J. J.
- Affiliations
- California Institute of Technology (US)
- Hampton University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Ingersoll, Andrew P.
- Venue
- Geophysical Research Letters
- Publisher
- American Geophysical Union (AGU)
- Published
- 2018-08-11
- Volume
- 45
- Issue
- 15
- Pages
- 7851-7856
- ISSN
- 0094-8276 (ISSN-L)
- 1944-8007
- OpenAlex
- W2884013103
- Cited by
- 8
- References
- 19
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 1 · 2020: 3 · 2019: 3
- FWCI
- 0.80
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Geophysical Research Letters (publishedVersion)
- CaltechAUTHORS (California Institute of Technology) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- National Science Foundation (1411952)
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration
- Jet Propulsion Laboratory
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Astronomy and Astrophysics › Astro and Planetary Science
- Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Astronomy and Astrophysics › Ionosphere and magnetosphere dynamics
- Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Astronomy and Astrophysics › Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies
- Keywords
- Saturn atmosphere, high-resolution imaging, cumulus clouds, anticyclones, cyclones, upwelling and downwelling, kinetic energy dissipation, diffusion coefficient, haze, cloud height, Cassini mission
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