Saturn featurless in visible light?

[danielj]

I saw very nice photos of the ringed planet,but most of them(which shows storms and swirls),are in infrared.Could be Saturn feauterless in visible light?To the human eyes,Saturn will appear rather bland,I guess...if it?s not true,where are the visible light images.
I understand that Titan has a dense cover of clouds,and the surface is almost hidden in visuals wavelenghts.But does the Saturn?s haze act in the same way?

[Evil Dr Ganymede]

Saturn in visible light:
http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA01383
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/i ... geID=23352
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/h ... 30909.html

Trust me, there's plenty to see in the visible light there.

[danielj]

You can see the colors well,and the bands.But the most spetacular features like swirls and storms are only seen in infrared light.This is the opposite of what happen in Jupiter,when even in visible light,there is plenty of storms.
I wish Cassini made a image of some storms or swirls in visible light.
What we get until now is almost useless to build a new Saturn texture.
Maybe the correct representation of the planet is by putting saturn.png as a cloudmap.What do you think?

[ElPelado]

I've been thinking about this for a long time:
-Imagine Saturn with out the rings? It would be one of the most boring things to look at in the sky
-Imagine Jupiter with out the cloud bands(it would be something similar to Saturn) and with out the galilean moons, also boring...
-Imagine Mars clouded as Venus... another one-color-boring-ball...
-Imagine Venus in the position of Mars or anyother place farther from teh Sun than us, with out its phases like the moon...

I think each planet has its own special feature, in saturn you have the Rings, and thas enough to impress everyone

[Michael Kilderry]

Uranus is a bit like how featureless Saturn would look without rings (although it does have them, but they are not clearly visible, not to mention the different colour).

The thing that makes Uranus interesting is that it rotates on it's side, although some people still think that it is pretty boring.

Michael Kilderry

[Ynjevi]

Uranus is a bit like how featureless Saturn would look without rings (although it does have them, but they are not clearly visible, not to mention the different colour).

The thing that makes Uranus interesting is that it rotates on it's side, although some people still think that it is pretty boring.

It's springtime in Uranus, and the atmosphere is getting more active. Recent Hubble observations show some clouds (cirrus?) on Uranus. So it may just have been a very dull time at the time of Voyager 2 flyby. But of course it is never as featured as Jupiter or Saturn.

[Matt McIrvin]

It's springtime in Uranus, and the atmosphere is getting more active. Recent Hubble observations show some clouds (cirrus?) on Uranus. So it may just have been a very dull time at the time of Voyager 2 flyby. But of course it is never as featured as Jupiter or Saturn.

Those recent pictures make Uranus look remarkably similar to Neptune. I guess it makes some sense, since at this season, the illumination is coming from a similar direction relative to the poles of the planet. Keep in mind also that they're in the infrared:

http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0411/10uranusweather/

[Matt McIrvin]

http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0411/10uranusweather/

...actually these are from Keck, not Hubble.

[Ynjevi]

I was probably thinking about this Hubble release. But you're right, both planets look rather dull in visible light.