spent most of this trip napping with my dog /// every time I come to wellington I remember how much I dislike the place & the people// need some sort of cathartic experience or something maybe? fight or at least go back to school//// thinking super cliche thoughts of you know, just leaving the country maybe//// been pretty sad and lonely lately I guess finding it hard to navigate the people I know ///// caught the ferry home this morning /// things are nicest in the mornings /// “friends manifest” // mum gave me her old engagement ring for my birthday and it’s so so nice

Hubble Sees a Flickering Light Display on Saturn

Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have captured new images of the dancing auroral lights at Saturn’s north pole.

Taken from Hubble’s perspective in orbit around the Earth, these images provide a detailed look at Saturn’s stormy aurorae — revealing previously unseen dynamics in the choreography of the auroral glow.

The cause of the changing patterns in Saturn’s aurorae is an ongoing mystery in planetary science. These ultraviolet images, taken by Hubble’s super-sensitive Advanced Camera for Surveys, add new insight by capturing moments when Saturn’s magnetic field is affected by bursts of particles streaming out from the Sun.

Saturn has a long, comet-like magnetic tail known as a magnetotail — as do Mercury, Jupiter, Uranus, Neptune and Earth [1]. This magnetotail is present around planets that have a magnetic field, caused by a rotating core of magnetic elements. It appears that when bursts of particles from the Sun hit Saturn, the planet’s magnetotail collapses and later reconfigures itself, an event that is reflected in the dynamics of its aurorae.

Some of the bursts of light seen shooting around Saturn’s polar regions travelled at over three times faster than the speed of the gas giant’s rotation!