Another rough mosaic that this time takes us right around the planet - the storm from end to end.
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If anyone out there knows how to make a QTVR that's wrapped on the outside of a sphere, then this would be a neat ride around Saturn.

Thought I'd try something a little creative by combining the storm pan with one of Bjorn's Saturn textures and then (in Stu-terms) "muck about with it and not claiming 1000% accuracy" to make a satisfying image using Celestia.
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Way to go Astro0! I love it when our members combine a little creativity and ingenuity to take images to another entire level.

Beautiful!!! (The one on the right makes just a jim-dandy crackerjack desktop, too!!!!)

I've just added some rough, RGB wide-angle views of Saturn and the storm to my Flickr account:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/10795027@N08/...ith/5529586500/

You guys 'muck about' so well. Please keep it up.

This is the latest WAC view of the storm, rendered in CB-GRN-RED colour:

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I took a crack at the storm on my blog. http://planetimages.blogspot.com/2011/03/s...-on-saturn.html

Very subtle, Ted, I like that a lot.

Awesome. I get the sense that it is disrupting the belts to the North.

I think it is disrupting belts to the South. In Ted's processed image, I think the storm is located to the W of the little "bright V-shaped" indentation and the storm oval itself is not really obvious in visible wavelengths (but evident and bright in Cassini methane transmission images). The storm is slightly oval and oriented SW-NE (the bright V-shaped region is at the E edge). Immediately under this region, the clouds at the southern edge are getting churned up.

Since this image was taken, some of the bright clouds (both north and south of the storm oval zone) have kicked up and become more impressive. Check out some of the images from the 18th and 22nd of March in the IPOW database: http://www.pvol.ehu.es/pvol/index.jsp?action=iopw

Saturn MethanoVision RGB[MT3,MT2,CB2] composite for March 21, 2011:

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The storm oval can be clearly seen in this composite as a brighter gray upwellling with the bright white "pickelfork" cloud structure stretching to the E. Compare with Ian's image above.

Here is a downsampled comparison graphic of Cassini MethanoVision composite MT3,MT2,CB2] and IR-visible[CB2,GRN,BL1] raw image composites, and corresponding ground-based images of the north temperate storm over a three month period (January - February, and March).

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(Much bigger) Full resolution is here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/31678681@N07/5565613071/

Very nice presentation Mike.

Excellent Ted-
I downloaded and animated the best frames of the Hubble data too:
Saturn storm animation

Be sure to watch it in HD.

Very nice! Good view of the ring spokes too- I'm not aware of the spokes having been seen from the Earth before, though maybe they have, and I've missed it.

John

Nice comparison Mike and my deep admiration of images from amateur astronomers!
And thanks to Ian, Ted and others for very good temporal coverage of evolution of the storm!

Has the storm flared up a bit??

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/photos/raw/rawi...?imageID=236730

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MethanoVision [MT3,MT2,CB2] of the big storm on Saturn on April 25, 2011. High Pass CB2 layer added to enhance detail. A small section of ring containing the moon (Rhea) was shifted to match the CB2 base image.

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Compare with the RGB composite here. The storm center is evident in MT3 and MT2 images, but not the visible or CB2 images.

Another comparison image of Cassini IR and Enhanced Visible compared to an Earth-based image taken at about the same time by Christopher Go:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/31678681@N07/5685274823/

(All images taken at approximately the same time, so the placement of the storm is at center left in the full disk Earth-based view.)

May 5 image of big Saturn storm taken by Cassini. This was kinda ugly to process. I ended up doing many overlays/multiplications of the higher-res CB2 layer to enhance detail and cloud structure.

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Cruising throught the PVOL database, in the Earth based images of the storm it is become more and more difficult to see the central upwelling - the turbulent cloud deck has wrapped around Saturn to make almost a double-white band.. In the Cassini visible it is also really difficult to discern in visible wavelengths. The center of the storm is still best lit up "bright" (high cloud deck) by MT3 and MT2 filtered images. In visible, it is only barely darker than it's surroundings.

Press release on Saturn storm. It has been observed by VIMS and CIRS as well and is doing an impressive job of punching up through the atmospheric layers and dredging up all sorts of stuff as it rearranges Saturn's normally calm belts and zones.

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?rele...ml&rst=3004

Planetary Photojournal showing false-color VIMS image of Big Storm on Saturn and a neat explanation of what it found:
http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA14119

Spoiler alert: Big honkin particles and ammonia pulled up by the storm, and high small particles and ammonia in neat structures just south of the storm!

Roughly correlated views of the storm on Saturn from Cassini and ground-based observation on June 13-14, 2011.
Interesting how the uplifted ares in Saturn (bright swirls in Methanovision) are dark in the ground-based RGB image.
Use the bright cloud edge and the "pinched" area to the E to help correlate the views.

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Much more details on flickr: .

7-frame CB2 images of Saturn rotation on July 9, 2011 (here) lined up and mosaiced (issues with terminator) to make a strip of the Saturn storm clouds:

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Click for full res to check out the cool-o swirly patterns.

Uh-oh. I think the storm is starting to snuff out. Most recent July 13, 2011 Methanovision composite [MT3,MT2,CB2] shows a much, much smaller upper level swirl. Maybe without a major updraft source the turbulence will work itself out over the next few months?

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(The little guy is up in the upper right corner with a slight greenish tint.]

Planetary Photojournal release of series of natural color images of the the storm as PIA14905.
(for some images they use the CB2 image in place of red to approximate natural color)

Massive storm pulls water and ammonia ices from Saturn’s depths.

Source: Univ of Winsconsin-Madison

....and accompanied by a Planetary Photojournal image release: http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA17044

Very cool science. For those who don't know, Saturn's weather approximates that of Jupiter except its scale height is much larger because the local acceleration to gravity is about 40% of Jupiter's. Therefore, layers in Saturn's clouds are vertically extended and it's harder to see the diversity of layers.