The eye of a storm on Saturn

"The Cassini probe stared deep into the swirling hurricane-like vortex at Saturn's south pole, where the vertical structure of the clouds is highlighted by shadows. Such a storm, with a well-developed eye ringed by towering clouds, is a phenomenon never before seen on another planet.

"This 14-frame movie shows a swirling cloud mass centered on the south pole, around which winds blow at 550 kilometers (350 miles) per hour. The frames have been aligned to make the planet appear stationary, while the sun appears to revolve about the pole in a counterclockwise direction. The clouds inside the dark, inner circle are lower than the surrounding clouds, which cast a shadow that follows the Sun.

"At the beginning of the movie, the Sun illuminates directly from the top, and by the end it illuminates from the left... The south polar storm is approximately 8,000 kilometers (5,000 miles) across, which is considerably larger than a terrestrial hurricane..."

"Considerably," indeed. Imagine a hurricane that stretched from Australia to Japan.

See also: Enter the Dragon Storm