Imagine a planet photographed from above the South Pole. The atmosphere is zooming around this still point in a regular way, driven partly by the Coriolis Effect. So from this vantage, the regularity of the atmospheric features should be most obvious.

Yep.

Here is the Earth on December 23rd, 2000, with the South Polar axis in the middle.

The various storms are rising and collapsing in a matter of hours, but there is a strong sense of eddies rotating around the system.

Here is Jupiter, photographed by Cassini from the same position. Remember that many of these features are stable – the bigger Red Spot has been tracked for centuries.

(Thanks to James Russell, who suggested the Jupiter shot).

This entry was posted on Monday, May 21st, 2007 at 12:07 am and is filed under science. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.