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My name is Bridget Hesman and I'm a
planetary scientist at NASA's Goddard

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Space Flight Center. And I studies storms
on Saturn.

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Great white spots on Saturn are these
large storms that erupt about once every

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year on Saturn, a year on Saturn is 29
Earth years. So about every 30 years we

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see a great white spot erupted on Saturn.

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The great white spot that it erupted in

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December 2010. Initially presented itself
as a small little white fluffy cloud

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that came up. And a various instruments
on Cassini were seeing it, and

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ground-based instruments seeing it as
well. And as the day's progressed the

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storm got larger and then it got sheared
from the top in the bottom of the storm

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on either side of it and it wrapped all
the way across the planet over the next

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few months. If you were to scale that to
a storm system here on the Earth what

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you would have is a storm system that
covers all of North America but wraps

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around the entire planet. There'd be no
escaping the storm system if you lived

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in North America and it would be lasting
for a very long time. This great white

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spot happened to occur ten years before
we expected it which was very fortunate

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because we happen to have a spacecraft
called Cassini in orbit around Saturn.

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And that spacecraft has a full suite of
instrumentation that allows us to study

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this great white spot over all
wavelength ranges. We never before been

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able to study a storm system of this
magnitude in the infrared so we are very

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fortunate at this time to have a
spacecraft in orbit and excellent

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ground-based facilities allowing us to
make a historical record of this great

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white spots. And that will allow us to
compare it in future generations when

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the next one happens.