5,000 mile wide hurricane on Saturn

A freaky storm two-thirds the diameter of Earth and unlike anything ever seen has been spotted on Saturn.

The tempest, some 5,000 miles wide (8,000 kilometers), has an oddly human-looking hurricane-like eye. But it is very different from a terrestrial hurricane, scientists said Thursday.

NASA's Cassini spacecraft photographed the huge storm. It swirls with 350-mph winds at the ringed planet's south pole.

It has a remarkably well-defined eye ringed by clouds that soar 20 to 45 miles high (30 to 75 kilometers), or up to five times taller than hurricane clouds on Earth.

"It looks like a hurricane, but it doesn't behave like a hurricane," said Andrew Ingersoll, a member of Cassini's imaging team at the California Institute of Technology. "Whatever it is, we're going to focus on the eye of this storm and find out why it's there."