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How to see a giant storm on Saturn!

If you are an early riser and have access to a telescope, you may be able to glimpse a view of a giant storm currently raging in Saturn’s Northern hemiphere. The image below shows the size of the storm on Saturn as captured by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute Image W00065995.jpg was taken on December 24, 2010 and received on Earth December 27, 2010. The camera was pointing toward SATURN at approximately 1,793,518 kilometers away, and the image was taken using the CL1 and BL1 filters.

According to Sky & Telescope Magazine, the storm was spotted in mid-December by Japanese amateur astronomers and has grown in size ever since. Apparently the last time, a storm almost as bright as this one was  seen on Saturn in 1994.

Saturn, Venus, Moon and Mercury finder chart. 4am AEST (add one hour if daylight savings applies) Thursday 30 December 2010. Chart prepared for Brisbane (Queensland, Australia) but is useful for all other East Coast Australian capital cities).

Not being an early riser, I can’t comment on how easy the storm is to see in an amateur telescope. If you don’t mind getting up early in the morning, you can find information here on where the storm transits (or passes across) the planet Saturn as seen from Earth. Keep in mind that the times given are listed in the U.S. Eastern Time Zone. You will need to add fifteen hours to the times listed to give you a correct time for Eastern Australia (or 16 hours if your state or territory is on ‘Summer time’.).

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