If you take children to your telescope, they first gonna ask you to show them the beauty king in the solar system. Yeah, Our elegant secret Giant with beauty rings, Saturn. And.. yeah, it’s not only for the children, we too drool over the beauty giants. Our scientists are so solicitous to explore the secrets within the solar system. This Big guy keeps some valuable secret behind its beauty. But we were able to steal a few secrets from this beauty king. But there are other giants behind him, which are more reluctant to disclose their secrets. Since they are out of our reach we couldn’t study them very well. But that won’t be the case anymore. Yeah, our bright minds in NASA right now have a perfect mission plan to send spacecraft to them.
We humans should always be thankful to two legends with incredible legendary life?️. The veteran spacecraft ever to get close to these giants. Yes, Our living Legend, Voyager and the dauntless hero, Cassini–Huygens Spacecraft. We thought these gas giant’s upper atmosphere is so cool since they are far from the sun, but the scientists astonished by the information received from the Voyager. Yeah, they are so hot. ? But why??
If it’s true, Saturn’s Upper atmosphere would be twice hot than the predicted one. ?
Do other Giants have the same anomaly?
From where do they get this excess heat energy???
from there arises the search for the mysterious heat source of Saturn.?
We needed a hero to reach Saturn and to reveal its secret. Then on 15 October 1997, a hero takes its birth for Mission Saturn. During its 13 year mission, this superhero has sent many valuable data to Earth and ended his life by jumping into the atmosphere of Saturn. Even at the end of life, he was conscientious and obedient. During his last Suicidal Jump, he did 22 ultra-close orbits of Saturn, a final tour called the Grand Finale. It was during this suicidal jump NASA got many valuable data regarding Saturn. Even at the very moment before death, he kept sending data to Earth.❤️
3 years after the demise, Cassini spacecraft again got a place in the headline of Science news. Yeah, NASA finally got the evidence for the mysterious atmospheric temperature of Saturn. The most touching fact is that this data collected during its Suicidal jump.
During the last ultra-close orbit around the Saturn, Cassini observed the atmosphere of Saturn and calculated it’s density.
Okay, but what this has to do with temperatures???? Hope you got it, yeah, Density decreases with altitude, and the rate of decrease depends on temperature. Cassini spacecraft calculated the density by assessing how the starlight changed as it passed through the atmosphere. This data told tells us that the atmosphere was hottest around 60° N and 60° S latitudes — roughly where Saturn’s glowing auroras show up. So, this aurora must have an important role in this anomalous heat distribution, isn’t? Exactly, This aurora light doesn’t emit much heat on atmosphere, but it has electric currents that can generate heat like the heating wires. You might be familiar with this process called Joule heating; yeah that is what happens here. These ultraviolet auroras are formed when the solar wind interacts with the charged particles on the atmosphere.
So we reached in a conclusion that space weather has a major role in the planet’s temperature. So it helps us to understand how space weather going to affect the atmosphere of exoplanets. If this is the case of Saturn, we have to think very seriously about Uranus and Neptune, which have a strange and weak magnetic field. This heat generation will help us to understand the formation of winds on planets like these gas giants. These winds have a major role in the distribution of heat all around the globe.
If Cassini had Life and emotions like humans it’s soul would be much happy about its sacrifice. And I think this ‘Friday’ is the best day to tell you about this valuable sacrifice.
-Arun S
Author
