Blue, Blue Saturn
“We’ve never seen an aurora like this elsewhere.”
- Tom Stallard, scientist, University of Leicester
A blue glow was recently detected over Saturn’s north polar region. It was discovered by NASA’s Cassini Spacecraft, which can view parts of Saturn that Hubble cannot.
Auroras like this (such as the Earth’s Northern lights) are caused by charged particles flying along the magnetic field lines of a planet into its atmosphere.
Where could all of those blue particles on Saturn have come from? That’s the question NASA scientists asked themselves. And here are the five competing theories they came up with as to how blue particles could make their way up high into the Saturn sky.
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(via Daily Mail UK)
