Incredible images capture the moment that Saturn's biggest storm began consuming itself after its head slammed into its tail
One of the largest storms ever seen on the planet Saturn may have eventually sputtered out by choking on its own tail.
The 'Great Springtime Storm' ravaged Saturn for 267 days in 2010 and 2011 and eventually tapered off when it wrapped around the planet and the head of the storm slammed into its tail, according to a paper in the scientific journal Icarus.
Scientists have never seen a storm consume itself in this way, and there is still little explanation for why the meeting of the head and tail would lead to the storm's demise.
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This is a chronology of the storm¿s evolution over several months. The topmost image shows the storm's turbulent beginning while the last one shows it fizzling after the head slammed into the tail
A series of images showing the vortex that spun off from the storm head. It was the largest vortex ever seen on Saturn and measured 12,000 km across, roughly the entire size of Earth
This image shows different cloud layers in storm. Red indicatse the lowest clouds, green are intermediate, and blue are the highest clouds
The monster storm was one of the planet's so-called Great White Spots, which tend to pop up every 30 Earth years or so (or roughly once every Saturn year).
This most recent one grew to encircle the planet by late January 2011, and it eventually extended about 9,000 miles (15,000 kilometers) from north to south before appearing sputtering out in late June of that year.
The tempest was the longest-lived such storm ever observed on Saturn, scientists have said. And it was the first one ever to be studied up-close by an orbiting spacecraft.
This image shows wind patterns within a clockwise-spinning vortex that spun off from the storm head in early December 2010, shortly after the storm erupted
The entire storm can be seen in a large mosaic stretched over the Northern Hemisphere of Saturn