Saturn With Hurricane Eyes - Shani Darshan

Recent Cassini Orbiter mission photographs reveal a strange hurricane on Saturn. It is not only huge and fast, but oddly, it is stationary. Scientists are hoping to learn more about how and why such a hurricane - the likes of which are otherwise unknown - would exist on the ringed, gaseous planet.

Saturn is known as Shani in Vedic astrology. It is a difficult planet: demanding, sometimes dangerous. Many rituals, mantras, gems, and prayers may be invoked to appease Shani.

Darshan is the Sanskrit term meaning roughly, "to see." In spiritual terms, it refers to the ritual experience of going before the image of a deity and gazing into its eyes. This is about "seeing" the deity, but it is more than that: while you gaze into the deity's eyes, He or She gazes back at you.

Looking closely at the new photograph, I was immediately struck by the similarity in appearance between the "eye" of the hurricane and an actual human eye. I could not resist mirror-imaging this eye to create a set of eyes, then transposing these "eyes" back onto the surface of the planet. (What you see in this new image, above, is the actual Saturnian hurricane simply magnified, doubled, and placed back onto Saturn [not at its actual location at the south pole], but otherwise not manipulated in any way.)

I find the result a bit haunting. Perhaps it will afford to those who revere Shani a new opportunity for Shani Darshan.

Jai Shani Dev! -- A. C. Burke, 11.12.06