Great White Spot

The great white spot.

The Great White Spot on Saturn, named by analogy from Jupiter's Great Red Spot, is a name given to storms that are large enough to be visible by telescope from earth by their characteristic white appearance.   

The phenomenon is somewhat periodic:

• 1876 first observations by Asaph Hall. He used the white spots to determine the planet's period of rotation.
• 1903 Edward Barnard
• 1933 Until recent times the most celebrated. Made by Will Hay, comic actor and amateur astronomer.
• 1960 JH Botham (South Africa)
• 1990 Stuart Wilbert
• 2006 Erick Bondoux, Jean-Luc Dauvergne 

References

• 1990/1 Hubble Space Telescope image
• 2006: observed with a 12" telescope by amateurs near Paris.
  • Volunteers Help NASA Track Return of the Dragon
• Patrick Moore, ed., The 1993 Yearbook of Astronomy, Mark Kidger, "The 1990 Great White Spot of Saturn", 176-215, (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1992).