Saturn's Canker

On the midriff of yellow Saturn, behind its girdle of rings, an immense, glaring white sore, about 7,000 miles across, broke out last week. First to see it was Astronomer John Edwin Willis at the Naval Observatory in Washington. Although it was after midnight, he routed out the observatory's superintendent, who flashed the news to Harvard Observatory, whence it was relayed to observatories the world over. White spots have been descried on Saturn before, one on the equator in 1876, several in the northern hemisphere in 1903. Astronomers could not find out what produced them. Last week every device in astronomy's modern bag of tricks was marshaled to find out what causes Saturn's cankers.*

*Saturn is comparatively difficult to observe because it, least dense of the solar system's planets, has a vaporous, clouded surface, and because its rapid rotation (roughly once every ten hours) wheels surface phenomena quickly out of sight.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.