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Scientists managed to take snapshots of an unusual edge-on view of Saturn's rings during a recent equinox to record unique images of the giant planet's northern and southern lights at the same time. A blue glow can be distinctly seen dancing above Saturn's north and south pole and the rare footage has revealed slight differences between the auroras.
The ghostly glow is similar to the spectacular northern and southern lights seen on Earth. Despite being more than nine times further away from the sun than Earth, Saturn is still peppered with charged particles from the sun. These particles become trapped in the magnetic field around the poles of Saturn, much as they do on Earth, where they smash into gas atoms in the upper layers of the atmosphere.
Analysis of the pictures and other data gathered by Nasa's Hubble space telescope has revealed that the northern aurora on Saturn is slightly smaller and more intense than the one in the south. This implies that Saturn's magnetic field is not equally distributed across the planet and is stronger in the north, say researchers.
Jonathan Nichols, who led the research team at the University of Leicester, described the images as "unique to science".
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