Everyone’s Favorite Planet Now On Ice – No, Not Earth.

Today I’m revealing an awful lot of secrets, but I figure you readers and I are BFF enough at this point that I can confide in you, right? Of course I can.

International readers: I’m Canadian.

Before you go ragging on my obvious love of curling and maple-flavored things, let me tell you as an authority on snow and snow-like phenomena, it gets pretty stormy up here sometimes. My American friends are sissies for complaining about Stateside weather.

But Saturn is currently making even us Canucks look weak.

Much larger than any Earth storm, Saturn’s currently experiencing a blizzard so epic, it’s visible from our planet without the need of any fancy professional-grade equipment – in fact, it was amateur stargazers who found it, and tipped NASA off. Come on, NASA, pull your socks up.

Okay, so NASA’s got an excuse. Their equipment – including the Cassini spacecraft, now orbiting the ringed giant and helping gather data on the storm – is finicky, requiring preprogramming months in advance. And sometimes storms don’t last that long, so amateurs being able to pitch in with backyard telescopes is always welcome free labor, from NASA’s point of view. Personally, I’d help too, but Toronto’s bubble of smog isn’t exactly ideal for gazing dreamily at balls of gas billions of kilometers away.

Also, isn’t Saturn, like, made of storms?

[Via Huffington Post]